Every home in the UK is to have broadband by 2012 under the government's Digital Britain report being published this afternoon.

Next generation changes in fixed and mobile networks are essential for an expanding economy, according to communications minister Lord Stephen Carter, who will launch the report today.

The Digital Britain report is expected to give every UK home a speed of at least two megabits per second (2Mbps) broadband access. Major telecommunications providers BT, plus mobile and satellite companies, are expected to roll out broadband to the 15 percent of the country that does not have access.

But BT and Virgin Media have indicated they are unlikely to be able to afford to provide broadband infrastructure to homes in the countryside, and are not expecting to receive much government help, according to reports.

A draft version of the report published in January contained little information on support, and press reports today state little has changed.

There will only be a "modest" package of support, including financial incentives and tax breaks, The Times noted.

Lord Carter, who will be departing from his post in the summer, has hinted that the broadband proposal could be part financed by leftover BBC licence fee funds from the digital switchover, a scheme which earmarks £100m a year to help the elderly and vulnerable to change from analogue to digital television.

BT told the newspaper it could not afford to connect remote rural homes to the service without financial support. "We believe that the future is fibre, but it is only economically sensible for us to connect up the big cities and new-build houses; we're not expecting Digital Britain to help us to run fibre into rural areas."

A source at Virgin Media added that the company expected the report "to offer us not much more than some tax breaks".

Mobile operators Vodafone and O2 have so far declined to release any of their radio spectrum to the cause, it was reported.

Andy Donaldson, principal technician at IT services firm Capgemini, said that the government needed to go further than simply promising the basic infrastructure for high speed broadband.

"The commitment to a 2Mbps universal connection speed is a short-term fix and ultimately toothless without the reassurance that contention levels will be reduced so that users actually receive what is advertised," he said. "Those paying for 8 megabits but only receiving 900 kilobits at peak times for streamed media will be the first to point out the problems that lie ahead."

"The network behind the broadband access network, all the way to the content source, comes into play as well [as the bandwidth to homes], and this is the crux of the issue which needs to be addressed," added Paul Gainham at supplier Juniper Networks.

And not everyone is interested in broadband anyway, according to Chris Williams, media partner at Deloitte.

"By making high-speed broadband access widely available to consumers, there is no guarantee that it will be taken up," he told the Daily Telegraph. "Demand and willingness to pay for services varies significantly, with some segments viewing broadband as an essential utility, and other groups choosing to opt-out even if services were free."

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