What if you could take along your strong and speedy home Wi-Fi connection wherever you go?

That’s the idea behind a new service from Sprint called Xohm, which takes Wi-Fi to its logical extreme. Fittingly, the technology behind it is called WiMax. Although it isn’t widely deployed in the United States, a test run of the service in Baltimore, where it was recently introduced, suggests that it could one day become a solid option for getting things done online and even making phone calls while on the go.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons the technology could also become a historical footnote, not the least of which is that it won’t work everywhere in a given city, much less all over the country. So-called mobile hot spot Internet services sold by cell carriers, including Sprint, have much greater range. But for those living in an area Xohm covers  the service arrives in Washington and Chicago in the coming months, with Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas, Fort Worth and Providence, R.I., to follow  the monthly outlay of $35 to $65 could be well worth it.

For $35, subscribers get home broadband service that they can share among multiple computers; $45 lets you connect at home or on the road with one laptop or other mobile device, and $65 broadens that to cover multiple devices. The prospect of getting speedy wireless service outside your house while also tearing up your contract with your home Internet service may appeal to many, because that combination is not available with data services from cell carriers.