problems using cURL to access https

[Rory]

I'm just starting to use cURL and having trouble accessing https pages.
All I want to do at this stage is get an https page and display it,
just to test the https get is working. However, I always get either a
CURLE_OPERATION _TIMEOUTED (28) or CURLE_COULDNT_C ONNECT (7) error.
I can see from phpinfo() that cURL and SSL are installed, as follows:
CURL support enabled
CURL Information libcurl/7.12.0 OpenSSL/0.9.6b zlib/1.1.4
but my code that works fine for an http call doesn't work for an https
call. Any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong or what might be
stopping the call from working? I'm on a hosted site so I don't have
command line access.
PHP Version 4.3.10, running on linux & apache.

here's the code I'm running:
<?php
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch , CURLOPT_URL, "https://myserviceall.co m/index.php");
// any old https page
curl_setopt($ch , CURLOPT_TIMEOUT ,10);
$result = curl_exec ($ch);
if (curl_error($ch )){
print "<br>error #" . curl_errno($ch) . ": " . curl_error($ch) ;
}
curl_close ($ch);
print $result;

print "<br>end<br >";

phpinfo();
?>

Same code works fine for an http url.

I've also tried calling curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_SSLVERS ION, 2); since
there was mention somewhere that might help, but same problem occurs.

help greatly appreciated.

- Rory