Just another addition to this (from the fringes of the internet):
In some corners of the world, you might have excruciatingly slow web page loading times even though your computer might be up to speed and your internet connection would be (at least in name) speedy.
The structure of many modern web pages is that the content (HTML, pictures, ads, trackers etc.) is distributed, meaning that they are not all on the same server and may in fact be spread all over.
For instance when I load the web pages of the local daily (server farm only 20 mms away), I am loading a lot of data from asia and north america.
Although the bulk of the data (in bytes) comes from close by, in terms of different connections, most are overseas...
So, depending on what the respective bandwidths and latencies of these overseas connections are the process of loading a "simple" page may be anything but simple.
HTH,