We’ve come a long way since we have first started talking about the iPhone 3G in Russia. Local carriers are ready to sell Apple’s device and, according to Reuters, the actual sales will start on October 3rd.

All major carriers will have iPhone offers for their subscribers. MTS, Vimpelcom and MegaFon will all have the same pricing offers. The 8GB will sell for about $924 while the 16GB will cost $1,084 without a plan. We’ll be waiting for detailed plan offers.

The Russian carrier VimpelCom has announced the launch of its 3G network in four cities. These are Saint Petersburg, Nizhny Novgoro, Samara and Chelyabinsk. Besides the launch of the new 3G network, VimpelCom has seven new plans ready for broadband Internet access.

Diana Samoshkina from VimpelCom said:

Our 3G product is targeting not so much mobile subscribers as residential Internet users who will be able to access the web via our GSM/UMTS USB modems which work both in 3G and 2G networks.

By the end of the year VimpelCom plans to launch 3G networks in 40 cities. Are they getting ready for any phone in particular?

Apple seems confident it will sell about 3.5 million iPhones in Russia and it has finally reached an agreement with Mobile TeleSystems, Russia’s largest carrier to sell the handset starting October. According to previous rumors we were expecting the iPhone 3G to enter the Russian market only in 2009.

Besides MTS, Vimpelcom and MegaFon are also considered by Apple to sell the iPhone. Currently more than 600,000 iPhones are being used unofficially in Russia and more are going to be sold by the time Apple will start to ship handsets to the country.

Russian carriers are expected to buy the iPhone for $399 from Apple and sell it for about $990. Quite a price! Not the usual affordable price Apple has been promoting but cheaper than any unlocked iPhone brought over from abroad.

A couple of weeks ago we were telling you how Russia is more likely to get the official iPhone 3G sometime in 2009. Nothing spectacular about that. Russians are busy with the Georgian conflict anyhow right now.t

If we are to believe recent rumors, two carriers are already in deep negotiation with Apple in order to get the iPhone deal. OAO VimpelCom and OAO MegaFon which are Russia’s second and third biggest mobile opperators are the companies we are talking about. Apple wants to deploy between 1 and 1.5 million iPhones to be deployed with each of them according to undisclosed sources from both companies.