Speed isn’t really much of an issue since the p2p is for transactions and block data; not large files. Latency is probably a good goal; have a well connected swarm insures transactions are processed quickly and block data is updated quickly so clients don’t lag behind the rest of the network.
Mainly, he doesn’t want home routers to get overloaded by the p2p part of bitcoin.
At the same time, those that have bandwidth and CPU to spare can set a high limit (like 1000 or more) that just acts at a super-node for the rest of the nodes to connect through.