True wireless metro area networks (MANs) remain the holy grail of the wireless industry. Recently, vendors have been going after them again with a renewed Indiana Jones-esque intensity and even more marketing might.

Who will find the grail is still anyone's guess: the largest deployments to date are still relatively small - confined to small cities, rural areas, parts of cities, shipyards, hotels, and campuses, etc. Industry experts agree that until a true MAN is up and running (read: downtown San Francisco, Manhattan, Boston, etc.), it is impossible to tell if the claims being made by many of today's vendors will hold up to the rigors and unexpected challenges of a real deployment.