Sure, but no-one is ever talking about deliberately over-long latency. There's a sweet spot where packet-switched is fast enough, while cheap because of shared

Sure, but no-one is ever talking about deliberately over-long latency. There's a sweet spot where packet-switched is fast enough, while cheap because of shared bandwidth and routing flexibility. It costs more to go faster, but it's game over to go slower than humans will accept. And it's unlikely that the poster was referring to direct (non-packet) connections since these have been rare for a long time.