Mobile misery hammers telecoms

BELEAGUERED telecoms stocks buckled further as the sector struggled to deal with another dose of debt downgrades and sales growth worries.

Following Nokia's handset sales warning on Thursday, mobile operators' woes worsened after it was reported that just 200 of every 35,000 people a month buying a new 2 1/2G GPRS phone handset from retailer Carphone Warehouse are regularly using the new technology.

After the disappointment surrounding WAP, the always-on GPRS handsets were billed as a key technology bridge between standard 2G handsets and the much vaunted 3G sets, which will be available on Vodafone, mmO2 and Orange's expensive new high-speed networks next year.

Among fixed-line operators, debt-laden Telewest was slashed further into junk territory by Standard & Poor's, which kept it on negative credit watch. Following rival NTL's massive restructuring, stock market investors fear a wipeout from a possible swap of Telewest's £5.7bn debt into equity.