A few weeks ago I had a little problem installing binaries via pkg(8). It was painfully slow. I had to do a fresh install on a new SSD after an old mechanical hard disk broke and reinstalling everything was a pain, not because I had to deal with it but because the whole reinstalling process was supposed to be faster.
Speedtest was okay. Installing from ports was okay, but in pkg the speed was only about 10 – 20%. Which is ridiculously unacceptable.
I don’t know if this is always the case but, when you install FreeBSD, its pkg server will be set to a US server which is pkg.freebsd.org, regardless of where you are actually.