Fifth-generation wireless, aka 5G, is on its way from theoretical to almost reality, now that engineers have finalized the technical standards for a major part of it. That means companies like Intel, Qualcomm, and Samsung can start mass-producing the chips that will power faster cellular connections in phones by 2019 and a host of other devices, such cars and drones, in the following years.

How much faster will it be? Possibly up to 5 gigabits per second download—beating the best smartphones today, which peak around a still-impressive 1Gbps. For reference, the average wired home broadband speed in the U.S. is just 0.064Gbps. That hints at a near future in which you’re not stuck with the one or two (or zero) home and office broadband providers in your neighborhood. 5G has another kind of speed boost: The delay, or latency from when you request data like a web page to when you get something back, could be as little as 1 millisecond—10 times faster than today’s 4G.

Related: The Wild Technology That Will Make 5G Wireless Work

Those are best-case scenarios, and it will still take a while to see what 5G services end up looking like. Wireless providers and equipment makers will spend the next year continuing limited trials in parts of cities—as small as a shopping center or a few apartment buildings.

5G services will initially run on top of 4G networks. The fast radio connection between devices and cell towers will be pure 5G. That’s the component that has just been finalized. But all the technology behind the towers—the routing, the divvying of bandwidth—will use current technologies that don’t include 5G capabilities beyond pure speed. The “core network” standards that make those capabilities possible may be finalized in the next six to nine months. “In cases where an operator already has an LTE network…they can use this first release and start to place orders, build out their network, and have devices for sale under that network probably as early as 2019,” says Rob Topol, general manager for 5G advanced technologies at Intel.

The 5G Yet To Come

The second part of 5G will enable services well beyond phones. Those include ultra-reliable, mission-critical connections for autonomous cars and drones; guaranteed low latency for devices like wireless VR headsets; and low-power, low-bandwidth modes for ubiquitous “internet of things” connected devices like environmental sensors. “The core foundation of 5G is, you build a system that can evolve and adapt to various requirements and new market opportunities through the lifetime of the system,” says Serge Willenegger, an engineer and SVP for product management at Qualcomm who helped develop the 5G standard.

Finishing the radio standard first provides extra time for lots of things that engineers still have to figure out. One major challenge is the very short-range “millimeter wave” frequencies needed to provide the extra capacity that everything-connected 5G networks will need. The signals can’t even travel as far as Wi-Fi signals, and can be blocked by obstacles as small as tree leaves.