To answer the questions that have been asked:

It does not matter where any of the characters on my account are. They can be in Port Jeuno, Port Windurst, Bastok Mines, North San D' Oria sitting in mog houses and the 2 to 5 minutes slowdown happens to all of them.

It does not matter what machine I use to log into my account, this always happens no matter which machine I use to log in.

If someone else logs their account on to my machine, their account is fine and there is no waiting - leading me to believe that this is an SE problem rather than a problem with my machine.

I am not being disconnected, I am connecting but unable to use my character until a few minutes have passed.