PANs are personal area networks. These networks have a very short broadcasting range. So far the reigning champion in the world of personal area networking is the Bluetooth specification.

Pan can be used in the home for such things as taking photos with your Bluetooth-enabled digital camera and instead of walking back to your computer every hour or so to download the images, you can send the images over the PAN to your Bluetooth-enabled desktop computer.
Or, in order to print some notes taken on a Palm device. Instead of synching the data with your desktop PC and then sending it to the printer, your Bluetooth-enabled Palm device can print directly to your Bluetooth-enabled printer.
With a wireless PDA and cell phone combo, both of which have Bluetooth cards. You can use the Bluetooth connection to allow the PDA to send e-mail via the cell phone's connection to the Internet -- without having to tap out messages using the phone's keypad, or even take the cell phone out of your bag.