5. Telecom carriers are cutting back, but not dramatically.

The biggest U.S. carriers -- including and -- are in much better shape going into this recession than they were during the dot.com bust. So while consumer spending will fall in 2009, it is expected to have less of an impact on the telecom sector than it did after 2001.

Yankee Group says the financial crisis will not significantly impact network build-outs by carriers because most of the financing for 3G, Fios, WiMAX and other next-generation networks is already in place.

"These are multibillion-dollar build-outs, and most of the financing has been arranged months if not years in advance," Yankee Group's Howe says. "We were projecting that in 2009 carriers would spend over $70 billion on these network build-outs in the U.S. Now we're saying that there will be $2 billion or $3 billion less in spending. . . . We're talking single-digit percentage declines, not wholesale cuts."

This doesn't mean that the network industry will emerge from the chaos unscathed. Carriers will squeeze their equipment providers, and companies like Cisco are already feeling the pinch. When Cisco its latest earnings last week, CEO John Chambers reported the company had seen its sales shift from solid-single-digit growth in August to a 9% decline in October.