Telecom giant BT has revealed that profit dropped some 45% for the first 6 months of the year and they have thus increased their cost cutting plan for the year from £1 billion up to £1.5 billion. BT has already said they have plans to chop 30,000 workers and have been concentrating on turning their Global Services division around.

According to an article over on the Times Online

, BT has announced that profit for the first 6 months up to the 30th of September tumbled from £991 million the previous year to £547 million, and sales dropped 1% down to £5.1 billion.

But apparently the results are “better than expected” and the chief of BT

, Ian Livingston has increased BT’s sales target for the year from an expected decline of 4% to 5% to between 3% and 4% with Livingston remarking they have had another quarter of progress but there’s a lot more to do.

BT is n the process of restructuring following 2 profit warnings last year and have stated that dividends will increase 5% for the full year and further announced an interim dividend of 2.3 pence a share.