Depending on where you are, that might be the case. In some places that might be enough to make using this site financially impossible.
Separately from that I find that even on a fast mobile broadband connection (31Mbps down) it takes about 5 seconds to load the first page, and 4-5 seconds to load subsequent ones**, following a link from an email. A snappy conversation it is not - if any of the systems I used to work on back in the 80s were that slow on every page load they’d have been thrown out.
** Firefox, Nokia 6.1, Android 10. On a newer phone (Nokia X10, Android 13) it’s about 3 and 2 seconds respectively. better; but still not great.