You're probably right to some extent - though B25/26 were both pretty snappy as long as you could hang on to them, no issues there at all. B41 just behaved like there was no backhaul whatsoever, totally dead/non-responsive, not that it was slow as a dinosaur or something along those lines - kind of like if you connected to a WiFi router at home or someone's house and you were only feet away and had a very strong signal/connection, but there would be no cable/DSL modem feeding into it.
Granted, the experience of too many mouths/not enough virtual food with mobile cells may be that way, but I suppose I would have expected some sort of ebb and flow where at least sometimes you could get some kind of sluggish responsiveness and sometimes nothing - this was consistent long-term 'nothing' every single time you connected to it no matter how long you tried anything.