BT has turned in a third-quarter pre-tax profit of £466m thanks to a better performance from the BT Global Services arm. Global Services poor showing last year led to a string of profit warnings a year ago. But there is still concern over pension provision.

And revenues continue to slide as BT faces competition, especially in telephony. Revenues of £5.19bn were down 4%. The telecoms company also admitted that "the Pension's Regulator's initial view is that they have substantial concerns with certain features of the agreement", but did not provide any further details. At the end of 2008 the fund was £9bn in the red.