30 mins for Grid 9, ZL 17, AFS-Level 9,11,12,13,14 just doesn't sound possible.
That was the normal time for downing the image tiles. GeoConverting is another story. This takes approx. 2.5 hours.
The same happened to me 2 days ago. Google loaded about 10 times faster.
I just tried with Google: 19 minutes download time (ZL 17)
I just carried out an experiment size 9 tile over Wales using Bing zoom level 16 which is my usual download AFS levels 9, 11, 12 and 13.
It took 13 minutes to complete the download, my internet speed is 30 MBs
Lucky you. Bing is still every slow, even with ZL 16 (Yellowstone NP).