I know I've seen this discussed here before but usenet spools keep getting shorter and I couldn't put together a sufficiently precise search on the telecom-digest archives.
Anyway, my niece will be spending about a month in England and Ireland this summer, possibly with day trips to neighboring countries.
Her US carrier is Verizon, so no GSM capability on her phone. My off-the-cuff suggestion was to wait until she arrives across the pond and then get a cheap prepaid phone at Tesco or somesuch. The rates to the US would probably be pretty good and by going prepaid she'd avoid ugly billing surprises. I'd like to give a more specific recommendation if I can.
In a perfect world, she'd primarily send and receive text messages, send a few photos, and occasionally make a voice call. Can this be done on the relatively-cheap?