Founded in 2003 by a group of leading telecom operators including BT, Korea Telecom, Maxis, NTT Communications, StarHub and T-Mobile USA as the original founding members, WBA now has 28 of the leading wireless broadband operators and vendors as members across Asia Pacific, Americas and Europe as on January 2008.

A key milestone was reached in November 2004, when WBA members started offering commercial roaming across participating carriers to allow their customers to roam across broader wireless broadband networks while using the same user ID and password account.

WBA's role in the wireless broadband industry was recognised at the Wireless Broadband Industry (WBI) Awards when the WBA Wireless Roaming Intermediary eXchange (WRIX) won award in the 'Best WiFi Product or Service' category during the WBI awards  2007 awards.

Wireless Roaming Intermediary eXchange (WRIX)

WRIX is a modularised Standard Service Specification for the interaction between operators implementing and operating Wireless LAN Roaming. The WRIX specifies the interfaces for Wireless LAN Roaming:

• WRIX-i for Radius Interconnection
• WRIX-d for Data Clearing (wholesale accounting)
• WRIX-f for Financial Clearing (wholesale billing)