A method and apparatus are disclosed herein for user/base station signaling and load balancing across a wireless network. In one embodiment, the method comprises broadcasting, by a first base station in the wireless network, information indicative of the load of the first base station; receiving an association request from the user terminal for association with the first base station in response to the user terminal predicting a net throughput from the first base station, based on the information indicative of the load, being greater than net throughput from a second base station to which the user terminal is currently associated; and determining whether to accept the association request while performing an association process for selectively allowing only a fraction of requests from user terminals to associated with the base station.