The bruised telecom industry won't have time to lick its wounds next year.

Telecom companies faces new technology and new competition, both of which could lower already-thinning profits. That, in turn, could lead to more job cuts.

Telco services and equipment are roughly 9 percent of the gross national product, according to Nicholas Economides , professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business. So bad times in telco mean bad times, period.

"The telecom bubble is the first to lead the economy into a recession; it may be the first to lead it out," said Joe Porus, director of research and analysis at Total Research Corp. in Princeton. "Everything goes in cycles. I can't see this thing being down on the canvas forever. The question is, how do companies survive until it gets up."

For now, bad news has become a regular occurrence, and it keeps coming.

Handset maker Motorola Inc. announced another 9,400 job cuts in December, bringing its total to 48,400 job cuts this year. Days later, equipment maker Juniper Networks Inc. said its fourth-quarter earnings would be only half of what Wall Street expected. Many analysts predict beleaguered equipment maker Lucent Technologies Inc. won't return to profitability until 2003.

Don't look for its return to robust good health soon. Here's what may be ahead in telco:

We'll see more hard times for long-distance carriers.

Up until now, long-distance companies have relied upon the "Three Ls" -litigation, lobbying and layoffs, said David Isenberg, editor of "The Smart Letter."

The days of fighting battles in front of judges and government regulators are ending, he said: "They'll either have to change radically or go out of business. Frankly, the two are fundamentally equivalent. It will be such a radical change, they might as well go out of business."

That's because fiber lines to individual homes will let consumers buy Internet services, cable services and phone services through one pipe. And that pipe might not belong to a carrier such as AT&T. Super-cheap, even free, calling over the Internet also could become a reality for more savvy computer users."The great challenge for the telecom industry moving forward is finding profits," said Robert Atkinson, director of policy research at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information.

Good times for regional Bells will continue, but not forever.

"The local carriers, they are monopolies and they are, to a large extent, shielded from competition," said Economides , the economist. "They will do fine."

They'll do fine until cable companies, such as the new AT&T Comcast Corp., make good on their threat to start carrying local calls. When that happens, giants such as Verizon Communications Inc. and SBC Communications Inc. will have to watch out.

Cox Communications Inc. already has become a player in local phone service. It has 50 percent of the market in Omaha, Neb., and 40 percent in Orange County, Calif., Atkinson said. Carriers eventually might get competition from direct broadcast satellites and power companies, which have their own lines into homes, he said.

"That's going to be a huge challenge for the traditional Bell companies," he said. "They stand to lose a significant part of the market that's generating their profits."

Equipment companies will sell less-complicated equipment for less profit.

Equipment is getting simpler and as it does, it gets cheaper. Add to that excess inventory and you're talking big discounts.

"Vendors are shipping a lot of product, but they're not making a lot of money on it," said Nancee Ruzicka, an analyst at Yankee Group.

Equipment makers will consolidate.

"There are a lot of players running around the same business - Siemens, Alcatel, Nokia, NEC," Total Research's Porus said. "Why?"

As vendors shed jobs, they're not going to try to build from scratch any technology that's missing from their product lines, Ruzicka said. "Now is a great time to buy. Startups are running out of time."

There will be fewer jobs in telecom.

After a year of cuts, there's room for more. The tangle of computers and wires carrying calls is growing less complex. At the same time, increasing competition continues to hit profits.

In 1985 in the United Kingdom, about 242,000 British Telecommunications employees supported 22 million lines, according to Peter Cochrane, former chief technologist at British Telecom. Less than half the work force, 110,000 workers, was running a 28 million-line network by 1995.

By 2005, Cochrane projects the network will have 30 million lines and 50,000 employees.

"They'll need a new infrastructure, new people, new financing, new business models, new skills and a different concept of the services they deliver," Isenberg said.