You are missing the curl_init() function since $ch is not defined
$ch = curl_init();
Also you are not printing the response:
**echo** USPSParcelRate($pounds,$zip);
Lastly, you can print the response from curl, change:
echo "TEST";
to:
print "RESPONSE: $result";
I'm getting that RateV4 is not authorized, where is RateV4 coming from?
TEST HTTP/1.1 200 Connection established
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: close
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:16:17 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
<Error>
<Number>80040b1a</Number>
<Description>API Authorization failure. RateV4 is not a valid API name for this protocol.</Description>
<Source>UspsCom::DoAuth</Source>
</Error>
Hope this at least helps with debugging..