"Two years ago, 5G was seen as a vision or even just a hype -- with the closing of Rel-15, 3GPP has made 5G a reality within a very short time," Georg Mayer, chairman of 3GPP CT, said in a statement. "The outcome is an amazing set of standards that will not only provide higher data rates and bandwidth to end customers but which is open and flexible enough to satisfy the communication needs of different industries -- 5G will be the integration platform for heterogeneous businesses."

A number of companies are already gearing up for 5G including Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T. "This milestone will allow for more advanced testing using standards-compliant equipment and paves the way for our commercial 5G launch in a dozen cities later this year," AT&T said in a statement.

However, while this is an important step, keep in mind that getting all of the necessary hardware and networks up to speed will likely take some time. There's still plenty of work to do.