The evolution of LTE outside of North America, Asia and Australia has been slow and bumpy, but we’re lately seeing encouraging signs for countries across Europe. Even more promising, the high-speed networks seem to be spreading to smaller countries too, in addition to giants like Great Britain.

Switzerland’s wireless infrastructure is the latest to get a major speed bump as we speak, with Swisscom rolling out 4G LTE speeds in 26 regions. From Basel to Zurich, from Bern to Gstaad and from Geneva to St. Moritz, millions of people should benefit from this important rollout.

The new network is expected to cover 70 percent of the population of Switzerland by the end of 2013, so Sunrise and Orange, the main competitors of state-owned Swisscom, will definitely be left trailing behind if they won’t counterattack and do something major themselves. As things stand, Swisscom already has a very impressive customer portfolio, with over 6 million subscriptions in a nation of just 8 million people.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with newly born LTE networks that don’t have stiff competition, Swisscom’s tariffs will be quite pricey. The unlimited Infinity XL plan with download speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s and upload of 10 Mbit/s (yeah, right) will go for a hefty 169 CHF monthly, or around $181. Meanwhile, the starter plan will only cost 59 CHF ($63) a month, but download speeds will be limited to 0.2 MB/s tops.

What you won’t have a chance to complain about is lack of LTE-enabled phones available. The HTC One XL is already up for sale, while the Samsung Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note 2 and Nokia Lumia 920 will start selling in “early December”.

Anyone from Switzerland tuning in to Android Authority? Have you got a chance to test out the new network? Would you care to share your thoughts? Let us know down below.