MOSCOW (WiMAX Day). The elusive company from St Petersburg, Summa Telecom, fought off rumours yesterday that it was to be acquired by Gazprom Media, the communications arm of Gazprom, the state-controlled Russian petro-chemical giant.

Several Russian journals reported a US$400 million bid by Gazprom Media, but Summa spokesman Igor Ryabov said “This is rubbish… They called us yesterday and suggested we should try to get acquainted with each other further,” the Moscow Times reported. “We refused even to meet them and there will be no talk about selling.”

What Summa Telecom is talking about this week is an investment of U$1 billion in a mobile WiMAX network that stretches the wild expanse of Russia. Summa CEO Sergei Koshkin told journalists yesterday that the US$1 billion investment “will be provided by our main shareholder, Ziyavudin Magomedov.”

The principal business of Mr Magomedov is oil transport and heavy metals, and many say that an investment of US$1 billion for him most likely is quite easy, and represents only a small fraction of the cash available to his company.

Koshkin also announced yesterday plans to build a new GSM network with an additional investment of US$600 million. He said the company’s intention is to provide a fully-integrated mobile communications service using GSM and WiMAX technologies.

This announcement also fostered rumours that while Summa hopes to receive one of the new GSM licenses that may be auctioned soon, the company is also planning and MVNO deal with Vimpelcom, owner of Beeline, Russia’s second largest GSM network.

Sources say that deal would provide Summa with GSM services, and likewise Vimpelcom would benefit with access to a national mobile WiMAX network.

These are quite aggressive plans for a company that few had heard about before the end of last year when it was awarded a national license for 2.5 GHz spectrum.

“This is a company whose operations are wrapped in a mystery,” Aton Capital analyst Anna Kurbatova told the Moscow Times. “Its operations are quite limited, but it does provide services for powerful state-controlled organizations such as Gazprom, Rosneft, Transneft and the Emergency Situations Ministry.”

The extent of planning revealed by Summa this week might indicate the seriousness of their investment. Koshkin said that the company’s investment for 2007 and 2008 will be $300 million, which will build the company’s WiMAX network backbone.

By the end of 2007, the company says it will have WiMAX networks deployed in 6-7 Russian cities. In three years, Koshkin said that Summa’s network will be deployed in 330 cities and reach a total population of over 50 million people, or 40% of the Russian population.