The 3GPP announced the news via Twitter, thanking the hard work of Qualcomm to make it happen faster than planned.
The decision means carriers like EE, Vodafone and the like will finally be armed with the specifications to put 5G plans in place.
The 3GPP group will publish the specifications this week and are set to encompass support for low-frequency (600MHz, 700MHz), mid-range (3.5GHz) and high-frequency (50GHz) spectrum.
It's these specifications that vendors will use to build up the spectrum in order to bring real 5G to consumers, Qualcomm's director of technical marketing, Matt Branda told FierceWirelessTech.
"This is really the step that enables vendors to start building equipment off of," he said.
The 5G modem was first announced a year ago but last month it appeared as the X50, in a test within a brand new Qualcomm reference design handset which the company will be using to test 5G in the run-up to market.
The results of the 28GHz millimetre-wave frequency band were in the Gigabit range, but will, the company says, be capable of 5Gbps when 5G is in common use.
This will make 5G as fast and faster than the fastest wired connections currently in use.
EE has also been working on 5G. The network demonstrated a fully-functioning, end-to-end 5G test network in November that was capable of delivering 2.8Gbps download speeds.
The firm said that it was a major step in the testing of next-generation mobile connectivity and that it'll help it deliver a commercial, off-the-shelf 5G service in the future.
Working with mobile phone maker Huawei, the test linked a virtualised 5G core to a 64x64 Massive MIMO active antenna unit broadcasting 5G New Radio, which led to ground-breaking speeds. µ
