Bright and early Tuesday morning, Credit Suisse issued upgrades to Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and Research in Motion Limited (NASDAQ: RIMM), lifting both of them from Neutral to Outperform. The brokerage cited a recovery at MOT's mobile-phone division along with growing demand for RIMM's BlackBerry as reasons for the upgrades. In addition, Credit Suisse elevated the price targets on both, upping MOT to $9.50 from $7 and RIMM to $95 from $76.

Credit Suisse did not stop there, issuing downgrades to MOT and RIMM competitors QUALCOMM (NASDAQ: QCOM) and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) from Outperform to Neutral.

"Well managed, dominant firms use downturns to become more powerful -- and that's definitely what Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) is up to," says Roger Conrad in The Utility Forecaster.

"Incorporated in 1924 as a unit of US-based ITT, the Spain-based company now serves 47 million customers in its home country, 150 million in 14 Latin American nations and 45 million elsewhere in Europe.

"Thus far in the recession, diversity and dominance of fast-growing markets has kept Telefonica growing. Overall global customer rolls increased by 15.2% through the third quarter 2008.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says there's clear evidence of Verizon's outperformance here.

Was AT&T (NYSE: T) (Cramer's Take) misinterpreted when CEO Randall Stephenson spoke at the Citigroup Entertainment Conference? That was the one where the stock traded down horribly after Stephenson spoke about the consumer business.

I know I thought it wasn't.

I read the comments that he made, or at least read the quotes of them, and they seemed like a change at the margin that could bring numbers down and implied that the economic downturn is leading to fewer phone calls and fewer phone lines and fewer broadband lines. I didn't know any other way to read it.

Neither did the press, with many of the headlines from around the country reading that AT&T "warned" about the quarter. None of the buyside or sellside firms I spoke to or read seemed to believe that this was just plain vanilla. All that I spoke to -- and I spoke to a half dozen -- felt this was a change at the margin that would impact earnings.

Cell phones and VoIP are killing the regular old home phone business. Reviewing a new study from a Citigroup analyst, Barron's said, "The telcos continue to lose residential phone subscribers to both cable VoIP and wireless subscriptions at a steady 7%-8% a year."

The number of consumers who use only a wireless phone at home is expected to hit 27% in 2010. And the penetration of cable VoIP is expected to be 25% by then.

It might seem bad news for AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ), but both do have large wireless businesses that should help offset attrition among home phone users. They are also selling new fiber-to-the-home broadband, which will also supplement revenue.

I just flew in from the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show where I declared my 2007 Consumer Electronics Best of Show Winner to be Vonage (NYSE: VG). Well actually, I just got my butt off the couch and stepped over to my computer after watching the HGTV presentation from the show. After close examination of all the gadgets presented -- and I know the show only revealed a fraction of them -- and based on what I saw, the Vonage V-Phone walked away with Best In Show honors for utility, creativity, ease of use and consumer value.

The Vonage V-Phone is an amazing little device which for a paltry $40.00 plus a monthly service fee (contact Vonage for details), allows you telephone access via any PC or laptop on the planet which sports a USB port. What makes the Vonage offering so exciting to me is that anywhere in the world you are, your callers can contact you by using your local home or business phone number, direct dialed.

The Vonage V-Phone has 250MB of on board flash drive memory which can be used to store files, MP3 songs, digital photos or any other manner of digital data. Vonage states that the unit loads quickly and automatically without the need for any software because the V-Phone comes with Vonage Talk software already preloaded. You simply slip the thumb sized unit into any available USB port connected to high-speed Internet, plug the included earpiece microphone into the side of the little V-Phone and you're making and receiving calls anywhere on the planet. The unit also comes with a standard size key ring already attached!

Gary E. Sattler has no financial interest in and is not compensated by Vonage.