There are three aspects to the ubiquitous network society:

• ICT Policy Development in Japan and the Ubiquitous Network

• International Sharing of the Ubiquitous

• The u-Japan Policy and the Solution Driven Approach to Establish the Ubiquitous Network Society

Results of a survey conducted by Prof. Sato of Keio University asking more than 30,000 Japanese: if they knew the meaning of the word “ubiquitous” showed that 24% knew about it.

The word ubiquitous has become very familiar among the Japanese. They know what the word ubiquitous or ubiquity means: being everywhere or in many places at the same time.

This word became famous even before the global proliferation of the Internet when Dr. Mark Weizer of Xerox used ubiquitous computing in 1998. Nomura Research Institute (NRI) started to use this word around 1999.

During the mid-internet era, NRI started to discuss issues on ubiquity but they thought that the ubiquity of Internet access was much more important than the ubiquity of computing capability so NRI decided to use the word for the ubiquitous network instead of ubiquitous computing.

In 1998, Dr. Weizer introduced ubiquitous computing and that was introduced to Japan in 1991 by translation but nothing happened since then for about a decade. It was only about the turn of the century when Japanese businesses started to take an interest in the ubiquitous paradigm particularly in the year 2000 when NRI started publishing about the ubiquitous network.