I realize this is a bit late, but I just ran across this node tonight. If you need arrow key navigation that works over telnet and you can install some extra software, I highly recommend dialog. It's an extremely easy use bit of software that lets you integrate a menu driven front end to any scripting language. You can read more about it at the Dialog Home Page

From the webpage:
" Dialog is a utility to create nice user interfaces to shell scripts, or other scripting languages, such as perl. It is non-graphical (it uses curses) so it can be run in the console or an xterm. There are also graphical Xwindows versions mentioned below."

   I can't describe how easy this is to use. It really is one of those things you have to play with to understand. Even if you can't use it on this project, you should download it and play with it just for fun. 'Cause you never know when you might need a menu driven script. Or maybe that's just me. :)