NEW DELHI: The S&P BSE Telecom was trading nearly 1 per cent up at 1,689 around 11:40 am (IST), backed by gains in shares of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (up 15.03 per cent) and Himachal Futuristic Communications (up 13.64 per cent).

Other telecom stocks such as Tejas Networks (up 7.31 per cent), GTL Infrastructure (up 5.88 per cent), Aksh Optifibre (up 4 per cent), GTL (up 3.75 per cent), ITI (up 2.07 per cent), Bharti Airtel (up 1.51 per cent) and Tata Communications (up 0.54 per cent) were also trading up.

On the other hand, Reliance Communications (down 2.13 per cent), Bharti Infratel (down 0.98 per cent), Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) (down 0.71 per cent) and Idea Cellular (down 0.65 per cent) were trading down in the telecom index around that time.

Benchmark BSE Sensex was up 26 points at 34,083, while the NSE Nifty50 index was 2 points up at 10,533.

Among the 50 stocks in the Nifty50 index, 23 were trading in the green, while 25 were in the red.

Sun Pharma, Bharti Airtel, Tata Motors and Coal India were leading the Sensex index.

On the contrary, Hindustan Unilever, Tata Consultancy Services, ICICI Bank and HDFC were among the losers in the Sensex index.