By Rob Arkwright, Hargreave Hale & Co

TELECOMS, media and technology, or TMT stocks, as they are more commonly known, came back to life earlier this week, boosting the market to a five-week high.

The telecoms surged, largely due to investor relief that the Italian 3G auction only raised £7 billion, after Blu pulled out, compared with £22 billion raised in the UK auction.

This meant profits wouldn't be eroded as much as previously forecast.

British Telecom, which owns 20pc of Blu, its Italian mobile phone operation, was under pressure to increase its stake in Blu, or pull out of the auction.

BT decided to withdraw Blu, which angered the Italian government.

In response, BT said it would consider raising its stake in Blu, but only after the 3G auction.

However, the whole sector was boosted by better than expected results from Qwest Communications, the US telephony and data services.

Four of the FTSE 100 telecoms made more than 10pc gains on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, this was short-lived, with further bad news from Wall Street the following day.

Nortel Networks, the Canadian telecoms, was hit by revenue fears and sent the Nasdaq tumbling by nearly 6pc.

BT also retreated, following reports that it had ended talks with AT&T about combining their business services operations.

It appears that investors are still very keen on buying TMTs, after their surge began about this time last year, but every time a positive run starts, the US delivers another set of weak numbers, and they fall back again.

Among the technology sector, Geo Interactive Media has seen another volatile week as usual.

The Israeli video streaming group launched its eagerly awaited video phone with Samsung, its South Korean partner.

Geo's chief technology officer said it has delivered the worlds first ever video cell phone and is the opening of a new era in human communications. Star Trek fiction is now a reality.

Finally, there have been bearish notes on some of the largest UK computer services groups such as Logica and Sema Group.

This is due to slower than expected recovery in European markets, with the euro continuing to slide and the effects of the millennium bug still lingering.