In one of those moments that leaves you scratching your head and wondering how it happened, the specifications and release date of the Surface Pro LTE appear to have been leaked by Microsoft staff speaking in an official capacity on behalf of the company.

When Microsoft announced the 2017 refresh of its Surface Pro tablet, the company promised a version with integrated LTE for those who need connectivity on the go. Since that initial announcement, we've heard nothing about when this device would become available or what its specs would be. The news that Panos Panay, corporate vice president of Microsoft Devices, would be at an event in London in October led to speculation that this would be the moment we learned when the LTE device would materialize.

That may still be the case, but at its Ignite conference this week any surprise or novelty to such an announcement was ruined. As reported by Neowin, at a presentation titled "Surface product engineering behind the scenes, and deep dive on the new Surface Pro," a Microsoft spokesperson said that the product would be available on December 1. It would come in two i5-based configurations: one with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage, the other with 8GB and 256GB.

An i7 variant appears unlikely. The i5 Surface Pros are fanless; the i7 ones are not. Neowin writes that the LTE modem is placed where the i7's fan would be. This creates an either/or decision: you can have a fan, or a modem, but not both.

The site reports that the modem will be a Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 (the same as is used in the Snapdragon 835 system-on-chip), which is capable of gigabit speeds, given a suitable carrier with the right aggregation support. Microsoft's description of the speeds is more conservative, though still impressive, with the company saying that download speeds of up to 450Mb/s can be achieved.

The device will have seven antennas, with a single radio/LTE band configuration used in every market. This should mean that the systems will have wide compatibility with LTE networks even when used internationally. There will be a physical nano-SIM slot, as well as support for electronic SIMs. The worst-case battery life hit from using LTE will be about 10 percent.

The only mystery now surrounds pricing of the product.

Update: a little bird tells us to expect pricing of $1,149 for the low-end config, $1,449 for the high-end config. This represents a $150 price premium over the non-LTE models.