BARCELONA — 5G wireless data is coming, and it will change everything. It will be in your house, your office and the places in between. It will not just follow your car, but speak to it. 5G wants you to be comfortable about all this, because 5G cares about you.

Maybe I’m laying on the hype a little thick for this future advance in wireless broadband. But I’m not overselling it any more than many participants at Mobile World Congress did last week.

“5G will connect everybody and everything,” declared Tim Baxter, president and chief operating officer of Samsung Electronics America, during the company’s presentation at the conference.

Stéphane Richard, CEO and chairman of France’s Orange Group, had a shorter phrase for 5G’s appeal at a keynote Tuesday: “5G will be key to a better me.”

So when will we be able to use this internet magic bullet? Not soon enough, it turns out.

The basics: speed and responsiveness

Two basic things set 5G apart from today’s 4G LTE (“Long Term Evolution”) technology. One is speed. 5G promises data connections that are normally reserved for the kind of gigabit fiber-optic connections that many Americans don’t even have access to. The second is exceedingly low “latency”— the time it takes for a single packet of data reach its destination, which would make apps and services much more responsive.

Today’s wireless broadband is generous with bandwidth but stingy on latency. For instance, PCMag.com’s nationwide 2016 testing found that Verizon (VZ) offered America’s fastest LTE, with downloads averaging a speedy 27.79 megabits per second. Its latency, though, measured a pokey 60.97 milliseconds.

5G, however, promises to drive down latency to below 1 ms, what you’d get on a hard-wired network connection. That means apps that react far faster to your inputs.

Do human users need that kind of responsiveness on a mobile device? Probably not. But, as Richard noted, self-driving cars and robot surgeons will.

So will streaming virtual reality. At Samsung’s event, Verizon chief information and technology architect Roger Gurnani said 5G would allow “virtual amusement parks where you can experience immersive entertainment and amusement without having to stand in long lines.”

Verizon is also betting that 5G will replace wired home connections. The company will start “pre-commercial” testing in 11 U.S. cities in the coming months. In January, AT&T (T) announced plans to test its 5G network to deliver its DirecTV Now video service in Austin, TX.

What’s more, 5G networks should support far more devices at once — although if this means that 5G users in Washington have sufficient bandwidth on 2021’s Inauguration Day, I will be pleasantly surprised.