The UK’s first LTE network, Everything Everywhere (EE), has announced its first wave of tariffs and handset prices. As previously announced, the Lumia 920 has been made an EE exclusive and it has been joined by the Lumia 820, free on contract, which is currently an exclusive too. At the time of writing, there are no other Windows Phone 8 handsets offered by the network.

Before the end of the year, EE will only have rolled out its LTE network across a limited number of cities across the UK which could limit sales that Nokia sorely needs. Even though the LTE equipped devices will operate at lower speeds in the rest of the country, doing so would defeat the objective of paying the relatively high tariffs for 4G data speeds.

The cities that EE has rolled out to so far are London, Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham, and 12 others will follow by the end of 2012. Those are: Belfast, Derby, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle, Sheffield and Southampton.

Here are EE’s tariffs and handset prices for Lumia handsets.

These prices are understandably high compared to 3G contracts. However, we can expect competition to drive prices down as Vodafone and O2 begin to roll out their LTE networks during 2013.

For those eager to buy any Windows Phone 8 handset who do not live in the 16 cities that EE has enabled LTE, it is worth considering buying a handset SIM free. In this case, LTE speeds may not be available, but all Windows Phone 8 handsets will operate on GSM and 3G frequencies if (originally) purchased through UK retail channels.