A SENIOR manager at Cable and Wireless in Swindon today confirmed he could not offer any guarantees to employees.

The Evening Advertiser announced yesterday that the beleaguered telecoms group was cutting a total 1,500 UK jobs and the future of workers at the company's Swindon site still hangs in the balance.

The former FTSE-100 company, which has already shed thousands of jobs world-wide to cope with huge losses, has about 150 staff at the Internet Solutions Centre, based in Windmill Hill Business Park, West Swindon.

Denis Mulhall, vice-president of service assurance at the centre, said: "We are still working through the details to develop a complete and thorough implementation plan."

He said it was still early days and too soon to tell whether any jobs at the Swindon site will be affected by the cuts.

"It is important to emphasise that these measures are projected over the next 18 to 24 months," Mr Mulhall added.

Employees who will lose their jobs are likely to be told in a matter of weeks.

The Internet Solutions Centre is one of Europe's largest data and web hosting centres.

C&W is pulling out of the US and suspending its dividend as it battles to recover from massive losses.

The company was caught out when the dot.com bubble burst after it invested heavily in new technology and domestic markets in the US.

Over the past two years it has reported losses exceeding £10 billion, largely due to huge write-offs. The problems have been worst at its Global division which provides Internet and data services to companies.

As a result its shares have slumped from more than £15 at the height of the dot.com boom in 1999 to as low as 37p last year.

Yesterday they eased 1p to 102.5p.

In its heyday, C&W provided communications services for the British Empire and its back-to-basics restructuring plan focuses on its fixed and mobile telecom units in the Caribbean and Asia.

With a British workforce of 5,500, mainly in Birmingham, Manchester, Bracknell and Milton Keynes, the group is second only to BT in the business telecom market.

Restructuring in the UK is expected to take three years, with the business returning to profitability in the financial year 2005-06.

David Thain, spokesman for C&W in the UK, said: "It is still unknown who, where or from which department these job cuts will be made.

"But the vast majority of employees will be told in a matter of weeks."