Wireless Broadband Alliance

The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) was established in 2003 by a group of visionary operators as a global forum for wireless broadband ecosystem. Its founders and current membership includes mobile, broadband and integrated operators who view Wi-Fi as a strategic complement to other networks such as 3G/UMTS, WiMAX, DSL, Cable, and more.

The mission of WBA is to facilitate adoption of Wi-Fi enabled services through improvements in user experience, interoperability and service delivery across technologies, devices and networks. By leveraging its unique membership mix and strong operator heritage, WBA seeks to engage the ecosystem for enabling a seamless Wi-Fi experience for the benefit of the end-users. The WBA has developed a range of technical enablers and commercial frameworks, including the award-winning WRiX (Wireless Roaming Intermediary Exchange), WISPr 2.0 (enhancements to the Wi-Fi roaming best practices available publicly) amongst others. These have been instrumental in driving global Wi-Fi roaming. The leading operators and roaming providers have adopted these to successfully deliver a consistent Wi-Fi roaming experience and to reduce implementation time and effort. These enablers are being adopted by wider ecosystem to integrate Wi-Fi across technologies for 3G to Wi-Fi offload and WiMAX-Wi-Fi interworking opportunities. The WBA actively collaborates with other industry forums to enhance and harmonise wireless broadband roaming standards.

The members of the WBA include an influential group of 50 leading wireless broadband industry players from around the world. Together, the operator members of WBA own a global footprint of 220,000 hotpots, spanning key markets, cities and locations across Europe, Asia Pacific and Americas, with a pool of above 350 million subscribers. The current Board members of WBA include AT&T, BT, Boingo, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile, KT, Orange France, True Internet and TMN/Portugal Telecom.

For more information, please visit www.wballiance.com.