A couple of things to add:
When trying to play GA, after a fairly substantial load time, I am often added to an empty server. I then typically see over the course of one or two minutes, a handful of player who join, but never enough to start a game. Very strange!
Secondly, I've noticed that I always seem to be able to play the first half of a GA game without issue. If I stay for the second round, the game will freeze every time after anywhere between 2 and 5 minutes from the beginning of the second round with error 201 - lost connection to EA servers.