Barcelona, Spain -The world's largest telecoms manufacturer insisted there was no "crisis" in the phone business despite the worldwide economic slump, as the industry's main trade fair opened in Barcelona on Monday.

"There is no telecoms crisis," Ericsson's chief executive Carl- Henric Svanberg told reporters at the Mobile World Congress.

Mobile networks are suffering from fluctuating exchange rates, and with it how much companies can charge, but the telecoms business was not shirking the challenge of the downturn.

Rival Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) made the same point: "Operators have a stable income," Sales and Marketing Director Christoph Caselitz told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"Ericsson is strong enough to weather the storm," Svanberg added, pointing to what he called great opportunities in emerging markets.

However, he refused to give a concrete forecast for 2009, whilst NSN has already says it expects a 5 per cent shrinkage in the market for handsets this year.

Ericsson announced an austerity programme in January, and NSN has already made cuts, and is not planning to make anymore, according to Caselitz. "We are well-prepared for the crisis thanks to our restructuring programme," he said.

Both companies are pinning much of their optimism on the long-term development of faster internet connections. "It's all about broadband," said Svanberg. In the future the vast majority of people will use broadband connections on either their mobile or their laptop, rather than via a landline.

With Long Term Evolution (LTE) to improve the current UMTS mobile network standards, faster data speeds will be enabled, creating for the first time a common worldwide infrastructure.

Ericsson seem to be well-positioned for that mobile internet market, with a 45 per cent share of the High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) network, according to divisional chief Johan Wibergh. (dpa)