At 12.30pm, the key index was down 7.62 points to 1,523.6 as the consolidation channel on the market remained intact.
Malacca Securities Research said in its daily note that the support remains at 1,500-1,520 while next resistance is pegged at 1,540-1,550.
Among telcos, Maxis was down 12 sen to RM4.48, Axiata fell three sen to RM3.93 and Digi dropped four sen to RM4.19.
Plantation counters fell steeply with a 13 sen decline in Sime Darby Plantation
to RM3.89 and an 11 sen drop in IOI to RM3.78.Meanwhile, banks edged lower after the previous week's rebound. Hong Leong Bank lost six sen to RM18.16, CIMB dropped three sen to RM5.01, Maaybank shaved one sen to RM8.10 and Public Bank slid one sen to RM4.01.
On the broader market, there were 573 decliners compared to 304 gainers.
Carlsberg Malaysia, whose recent earnings result disappointed expectations, was seen dropping 42 sen to RM21.22 while F&N lost 56 sen to RM26.94.
AirAsia X
, which has been in the news in recent days on creditors' approval of its debt restructruing scheme, remained unchanged at 7.5 sen despite heavy trading activity.Other top traded counters included MMAG up 0.5 sen to 10 sen and DNeX gaining one sen to 85 sen.
In Asian markets, equities prices rose on the back of a positive surprise in Chinese economic data.
Japan's Nikkei rose 0.4% and South Korea's Kospi rallied 1.1%.
In China however, the strong economic data failed to lift sentiment with the main index falling 0.3% while Hong Kong's Hang Seng dipped 0.1%.
Australia's ASX200 rose 0.2%.