With phones and LANs steadily going wireless and consumer electronics not far behind, one part of the networked world - broadband to the home or business - has stubbornly remained wired in most cases.

Cost, complexity and proprietary systems have held back wireless broadband services that would compete against DSL, cable modem and leased lines. But WiMax, an emerging standards-based set of technologies, could unify the fragmented industry and bring down prices, according to vendors and analysts.

For customers, wireless can mean fast and easy setup, lower cost than some services, and broadband Internet access in places DSL has trouble reaching.

"I called them on a Friday, and it was installed on Tuesday," says Tamara Indianer, manager of a Waltham, Mass., branch of Lincoln Investment Planning. The branch had trouble getting synchronous DSL (SDSL) service after a move.

One carrier said it couldn't reach that site and another estimated two to three weeks for installation, Indianer says. She turned to TowerStream, which uses pre-standard WiMax gear from Aperto Networks. For $500 per month, a bit more than the cost of the SDSL service but much less than a T-1 rate, the branch got 1M bit/sec in each direction, she says.

TowerStream is looking forward to standardized WiMax gear and lower prices on customer premises equipment (CPE) that should result from interoperability. Vendors and service providers hope a standard will cut development costs and let many vendors compete, with more choice all around. The WiMax Forum, an industry group working to promote 802.16 adoption, plans to begin certifying interoperable products by year-end.

It's the same idea that's driven Wi-Fi's popularity, and Intel has invoked that wireless LAN phenomenon in predicting a rapid ramp-up for WiMax. What Wi-Fi did for the LAN, the longer-range WiMax could do for metropolitan areas and last-mile access. It initially will use the IEEE 802.16d specification and support connections to fixed locations at typical speeds from 300K to 2M bit/sec, over a range of as much as 30 miles. A later version, based on the 802.16e standard, which might be finished in about a year, is being designed to support mobility.

But some analysts and industry participants say the outlook is more complicated than with Wi-Fi. In addition to daunting competition from other technologies, WiMax faces questions about how it will use the airwaves in the U.S. and abroad. Product volume, the key to hoped-for proliferation, will depend in part on how those questions are addressed.

Intel and others have high hopes. By the third quarter of next year, CPE for a WiMax service to an office or home will cost less than $500, predicts Kevin Suitor, vice president of business development at Redline Communications, a maker of 802.16-based equipment. By 2007, it will cost less than $200, he says. Beyond that, with mobility, CPE will be able to ship in the form of internal components in notebook PCs at an estimated price of $50 to $100, Suitor adds. However, some observers and industry participants don't expect a repeat of the Wi-Fi cycle.

"The scale is not necessarily the same kind of scale that you have with the Wi-Fi chips," says Tad Neeley, an analyst at RHK. "The cost curve I look at with this is far more what DSL modems and cable modems did. I don't think it's going to be the Wi-Fi cost curve."