curl slow download in php

I'm using libcurl to download some content from another webpage. For
reasons previously unknown to me all calls are very slow to the point of
usual timeout. Now i found curl_getinfo() and retrieved some info on the
subject:

Array
(
[url] => https://undisclosed-website
[content_type] => text/html; charset=UTF-8
[http_code] => 200
[header_size] => 206
[request_size] => 314
[filetime] => -1
[ssl_verify_result] => 0
[redirect_count] => 0
[total_time] => 11.497675
[namelookup_time] => 0.00058
[connect_time] => 0.014817
[pretransfer_time] => 0.131733
[size_upload] => 0
[size_download] => 2763
[speed_download] => 240
[speed_upload] => 0
[download_content_length] => 0
[upload_content_length] => 0
[starttransfer_time] => 11.496867
[redirect_time] => 0
)

The download speed is insanely low, while my server is on an insanely
fast line. Size of download divided by download speed roughly equals
transfer time which proves my theory.

On the commandline curl is fast, so this seems to be an apache
setting/problem. Anyone any idea how to fix?

I'm on FreeBSD 6.3, with Apache 2.0.63 and PHP 4.4.8. Installed latest
version of curl and recompiled apache2 and php as well.