Russian mobile operator Vimpelcom, working under the Beeline brand, has started to launch the first segment of its LTE network for commercial use in the city of St Petersburg, Telecompaper reports. The first stage of the network deployment has already been completed in almost every quarter of St Petersburg, as well as in Vyborg, Vsevolzhsk and Gatchina.

Beeline plans to cover the whole area of the city by the end of the year. The network operates in the 2,600 MHz band with equipment from Huawei, and provides an average speed of 10-20 Mbps. The services are available through using white-label modems from Beeline, as well as smart phones that support LTE.