For Telecoms, Some Signals Of Distress

Beyond the wreckage created by the credit crisis sweeping through corporate America, the telecommunications industry has been a relative bright spot -- that is, if you're AT&T, Verizon or Comcast. Now a new financial crisis threatens to leave some telecom companies much smaller, or worse. To compete with the likes of Verizon and AT&T, a number of companies have taken on piles of debt to put down fiber optic cable or raise cell towers. That has left some, such as Ciena, Cogent and XO Communications, more vulnerable to market instability as demand dwindles for services from businesses and consumers, analysts say. "The smaller competitive telecos are once again on the wrong side of change and the economy," said Scott Cleland, an analyst at Precursor.