Last checked at 
* Labour promises free fibre broadband for all
* Labour to tax Google, Amazon and Facebook to pay
* Conservatives have also made broadband promise
* BT shares fall 3.7% in early deals
(Updates share price fall)
By Guy Faulconbridge and Alistair Smout
LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Britain's opposition Labour Party
said it will nationalise telecoms provider BT's fixed
line network to provide free full-fibre broadband for all if it
wins the Dec. 12 election.
The news, the latest proposal by Labour for nationalisation
of infrastructure, sent BT shares down as much as 3.7%, wiping
nearly half a billion pounds off its market capitalisation.
The plan would require a sweeping upgrade of Britain's
internet infrastructure that would be paid for by raising taxes
on tech firms such as Alphabet's Google, Amazon
and Facebook and using its Green Transformation
fund, Labour said.
Labour said it would nationalise Openreach - the digital
network arm of the country's biggest broadband and mobile phone
provider - as well as parts of BT Technology, BT Enterprise and
BT Consumer.
"It's time to make the very fastest full-fibre broadband
free to everybody, in every home in every corner of the
country," Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will say in a speech,
according to an extract released by the party.
"By creating British Broadband as a public service, we will
lead the world in using public investment to transform our
country, reduce people's monthly bills, boost our economy and
improve people's quality of life."
BT, which traces its history back to an 1846 telegraph
company, was once one of Britain's national champions but was
privatised by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in
1984.
Labour said the cost of nationalising parts of BT would be
set by parliament and paid for by swapping bonds for shares.
"These are very, very ambitious ideas and the Conservative
Party have their own ambitious idea for full fibre for everyone
by 2025 and how we do it is not straight forward," Chief
Executive Philip Jansen told the BBC.
"It needs funding, it is very big numbers, so we are talking
30 to 40 billion pounds ... and if you are giving it away over
an eight year time frame it is a another 30 or 40 billion
pounds. You are not short of 100 billion pounds."
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised to roll out
full-fibre broadband to all homes by 2025 if his Conservatives,
who are leading in the opinion polls, win the election.
'BROADBAND FOR ALL'
Corbyn, a 70-year old socialist campaigner who stunned
Britain's political establishment when he won the Labour
leadership in 2015, said he wanted to bring communities together
in an inclusive and connected society.
He plans to nationalise the rail, utility and water
companies as well as increase taxes on the financiers of the
City of London and the wealthy.
He said the current communications network was patchy and
slow. Currently, fewer than 10% of British premises have access
to full-fibre broadband - also called fibre to the premises,
where fibre optic cable instead of copper is used to connect
homes to the network.
Labour said it would roll out the free broadband to all
individuals and businesses by 2030, providing it to at least 15
million to 18 million premises within five years. It said the
plan would save the average person 30.30 pounds a month.
Under its plans, Labour said there would be a one-off
capital cost of 15.3 billion pounds to deliver the full-fibre
network, on top of the 5 billion already promised by Johnson.
BT CEO Jansen said last month that Johnson's timescale for
delivering full-fibre broadband to all homes would be extremely
difficult to achieve and said the company would need the
government and the regulator to create conditions that would
allow it to make a fair return.
($1 = 0.7815 pounds)
(Writing by Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge
Additional reporting by Paul Sandle and Aishwarya Nair
Editing by Rosalba O'Brien, Jane Wardell and Frances Kerry)
