Wide area network (WAN) has become critical infrastructure in the 21st century, connecting new businesses, new infrastructure, and various emerging applications. In recent years, there has been an explosive growth in data volume, accompanied by the continuous emergence of new application forms such as large-scale WAN-based models, digital economy, metaverse, and holographic society. In addition, the emergence of new service architectures, such as China’s “East Data, West Computing” project, computing power networks, and data fields, has posed increasingly high requirements for the data transmission quality of WAN. For instance, WAN must deliver not only timely but also real-time services, making latency a critical deterministic metric to meet. Therefore, wide area deterministic network emerges as a new paradigm of WAN. This study systematically reviews the connotation of deterministic networks and the development of traditional technologies related to deterministic networks. It introduces new applications of wide area deterministic network, discusses their new characteristics and transmission challenges, and proposes new goals for them. Based on the aforementioned new applications, characteristics, challenges, and goals, this study summarizes the main research progress in the field of wide area deterministic network in detail and provides future research directions. It is hoped that this study will provide reference and assistance for research in this field.