LONDON (AP) — Telecommunications company BT Group PLC said yesterday it expects to cut another 15,000 jobs in the next year after its Global Services division dragged the company to a fourth quarter loss of nearly £1 billion pounds.

In the three months ending March 31, BT recorded a net loss of £977 million ($1.48 billion), compared to a profit of 426 million pounds a year earlier.

The Global Services unit, a provider of communication services for companies and government agencies, posted a pretax loss of £1.5 billion, raising its total losses for the year to £2 billion.

The unit is expected to bear the brunt of the job losses.

BT said it had cut 15,000 employees in the past year, and expected "further reductions of a similar level next year". The company had 108,000 employees at the end of December.

Union spokeswoman Sian Jones said two-thirds of the job cuts were likely to be made in BT's operations in the UK. The union had no more specific details on the cuts, but "Global Services will be clearly be hit harder than others".

Global Services has 33,000 employees worldwide, the union says.

"Fifteen thousand is a very challenging level of job losses, especially on the back of last year's reductions," said Andy Kerr, deputy general secretary of the Communication Workers Union.

"There was a damaging mismanagement of Global Services by senior managers, which has been the main cause of these poor results. These managers have been removed and we're hopeful that this difficult time is now behind the company," Kerr said.

The division's losses swung BT Group to a full-year loss of £83 million, compared to the previous-year profit of £1.7 billion. Fourth-quarter revenue rose less than one percent to £5.47 billion, bringing full-year revenues up 3.4 percent to £21.4 billion.

BT cut its full-year dividend by 59 percent to 6.5 pence per share.

Shares were down 3.6 percent at 91 pence on the London Stock Exchange.

"Although far from impressive, the worst seems to be out of the way for BT," said Manoj Ladwa, senior trader at ETX Capital.

"Shareholders are likely to be encouraged by its dividend policy and measures undertaken to turn around its underperforming Global Services Division."

However, Jonathan Groocock, analyst at Investec Securities, said it was disappointed that BT did not provide a final figure on its pension funding deficit and that that may weigh against the company's shares.

BT will make pension top-up payments of £525 million in each of the next three years, but the final figure depends on further discussions with the Pensions Regulator on the underlying assumptions.

"Any uncertainty over the pension deficit is very unwelcome. Today we were looking for closure on all these issues, and we have not got that," Groocock said.

Following an operational review completed in the fourth quarter, BT said Global Services would concentrate on three areas: being the leading provider of networked IT services to corporate and public sector customers in the UK, providing network IT services to multinational customers and creating an enterprises unit to address specific customer needs.