Samsung Galaxy S III Becomes First LTE Phone In Russia

In Russia there has been an LTE phone network available for a while, but it has been used mostly for tablets.  The Samsung Galaxy S III will be the first LTE smartphone in Russia according to Engadget.  On December 20th, the S III will hit 17 Russian cities through MegaFon at a price of 29,990 rubles ($973) without a contract.

Early customers will receive up to 100Mbps downstream and VoLTE calls.  The iPhone 5 is arriving one week earlier than the S III, but there has not been an indication about whether it will work on LTE.  Russia’s phone networks run on the 2.6GHz band, which the iPhone 5 does not support.