My service was out from Thursday morning June 6th until Monday morning June 10th. The techs in the Central Office had more work to do than previously thought. I called Verizon Monday morning to find out when my service would be restored.
A Verizon Tech in Ohio called and instructed me to do a hard reset on the DSL router.
Now I am consistently operating at over 6.5 Mbps! This is the highest speed I've ever had.
So, I'm very happy to report this issue resolved.
There is a cautionary tale out of all of this - if you are not receiving the speed that you PAY FOR, complain, complain, complain to Verizon until they fix it! It took me nearly two months to resolve this issue, but in the end I am getting the speeds I'm supposed to receive!