Telecom Jumps Into the Bush League

Wednesday's re-election relief rally lifted even the tottering telecom sector.

Nearly every stock -- be it wireless, equipment or old-line phone company -- found itself in the green in midday trading after Sen. John Kerry conceded victory to President Bush.

Two outfits sitting out the festivities happen to be on deck for quarterly earnings later Wednesday.

Qualcomm

(QCOM) - Get Report

and

Sonus

(SONS)

were both down 2% leading up to release of their financial results after the market closes today.

Qualcomm watchers have

grown concerned lately over the possibility that record-level global cell phone demand may diminish next year. Meanwhile, Sonus hasn't exactly been a beacon of stability of late. The advanced phone switch maker tumbled into an accounting scandal earlier this year, missed financial reporting deadlines and briefly got delisted from the

Nasdaq

.

But those stocks were the outliers Wednesday. Big phone giants, the Bells --

Verizon

(VZ) - Get Report

,

SBC

(SBC)

and

BellSouth

(BLS)

-- were each up about 1%, swept up amid the hoopla on Wall Street. And tech glass maker

Corning

(GLW) - Get Report

was up 34 cents, or nearly 3%, to $12.09 on the strength of its reaffirmed guidance Tuesday.

It's not clear how long the good feelings will last on the Street, but by next week all eyes in tech will soon turn to

Cisco

(CSCO) - Get Report

as the computer networking titan turns in its fiscal first-quarter results.

Warm words from Cisco about improved confidence among tech equipment buyers would certainly provide a real added lift for the sector. But, of course, anything short of that will likely signal that the long-awaited recovery is still nowhere in sight.