  We consider extra dimensional gauge theories on an interval. We first review
the derivation of the consistent boundary conditions (BC's) from the action
principle. These BC's include choices that give rise to breaking of the gauge
symmetries. The boundary conditions could be chosen to coincide with those
commonly applied in orbifold theories, but there are many more possibilities.
To investigate the nature of gauge symmetry breaking via BC's we calculate the
elastic scattering amplitudes for longitudinal gauge bosons. We find that using
a consistent set of BC's the terms in these amplitudes that explicitly grow
with energy always cancel without having to introduce any additional scalar
degree of freedom, but rather by the exchange of Kaluza--Klein (KK) gauge
bosons. This suggests that perhaps the SM Higgs could be completely eliminated
in favor of some KK towers of gauge fields. We show that from the low-energy
effective theory perspective this seems to be indeed possible. We display an
extra dimensional toy model, where BC's introduce a symmetry breaking pattern
and mass spectrum that resembles that in the standard model.
