At 135kbps, you're talking 18 seconds to load the average HTML webpage, which was 300k in 2007. My guess is, your memory of how speedy and useful Edge was, is like those fond nostalgia memories people had about how fast their FidoNet/WWIV BBSes loaded over 300/1200 baud.

In those old days the text would load first, and then the images slowly. It wasn't so bad. I had below-average 56k dial-up until 2002. Getting 3.0 Kbps was a high point for me.