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.