Welcome to the 7^th Asia-Pacific Network operations and Management Symposium (APNOMS 2003), Fukuoka, Japan.

APNOMS has been annually held since 1997. This series of symposium is dedicated for professionals and experts, including engineers and researchers from operators, vendors, customers, and academia, to meet and discuss operations and management issues in telecommunications services and networks. The progress of technologies in the area of the Internet and mobile communication do not stay. We have selected "Managing Pervasive Computing and Ubiquitous Communications," as the main theme of the APNOMS 2003. Today, "the ubiquitous society" frequently appears in mass media, and it spreads a roseate dream and image to the future human life. Examples of such applications include, inventory management, product tracking, home automation, home and community security management, and environment protection. Governments are trying to push research and development in ubiquitous-related areas. Industries are seeking business chances in the near future.

It is impossible to manually handle, configure or manage immense tiny computer chips as well as sensor nodes in our environment, which may be used in the ubiquitous society. We need self-organized, ad-hoc, and secure networking technologies. There are a lot of issues on how to manage these emerging networking paradigms. Novel network operations and management concepts and frameworks need to be discussed. I believe that APNOMS 2003 could provide useful and challenging opportunities to share our experiences and ideas on the latest network operations and management topics and issues, including those for pervasive computing and ubiquitous communications. On behalf of the Organizing Committee, I would like to welcome all the participants to Fukuoka. I sincerely hope that all the participants will make this symposium very fruitful, find it very useful, have very enjoyable time in many ways, and take home what they need.

Finally, I would like to thank all contributors to this symposium, who made this all possible. In particular, I very much appreciate all committee members, who devoted their time for preparing and supporting this symposium to make it successful.  

Kenichi Mase
General Chair
Niigata University, Niigata, Japan