Mobile phone company 3 unveiled its lower cost smartphone alternative INQ1today, and will launch it in the United Kingdom, Australia and Hong Kong beginning in December, the Guardian reported Monday.

Pronounced “ink one,” the phone targets users who want to surf the mobile Web, but can't really afford smartphones like the iPhone, Blackberry Storm or G1. Sure to be called the “Facebook phone,” INQ1 has a button that sends users straight to Facebook.

3 will make the INQ1 free to people who sign an 18-month contract for £15 a month. The contract includes unlimited access to Facebook and Skype calls, unlimited e-mail, text and calls to other 3 customers and 75 minutes in calls per month to other networks, as well as access to Windows Live Messenger, according to the Guardian.

Comparatively, the Guardian points out that with O2, the iPhone is free with a £45 per month, 18 month contract, or £349.99 for a pre-paid version; the Google phone, G1, is £40 per month with an 18 month contract with T-Mobile; the Blackberry Storm is £35 per month with Vodafone for a two-year contract.

Frank Mehan, INQ's chief executive, told the Guardian that INQ1 was specifically designed to bring the mobile Web to a wider audience.

“We could not find anything under $500 that gave customers good access to the Internet, so we said 'stuff it, we'll do it ourselves,'” Mehan said, according to the Guardian.

Mobile Entertainment stated that 3's unlimited access to the services offered on INQ1 are “pretty amazing, and it moves the company even closer to being a neutral network for other firms' services and further away from its dream of being a 'mobile media company.'”

“Although the handset itself will steal precious few sales from Nokia, Samsung et al in the short term, the bundle seems to me a marker of things to come,” the Mobile Entertainment article states. “Now, all-you-can-eat data is a reality, social networking is driving more mobile internet traffic than anything else and operators are surrendering their home pages to the web's biggest brands.”