The NBASE-T Alliance was formed in 2014 to develop a standard for intermediate transmission speeds on common CAT 5 and CAT 6 cable (in 2019 the NBASE-T Alliance merged into the Ethernet Alliance). In 2016 the new standard was approved by the IEEE standards association as IEEE Std 802.3bz. The original impetus was to satisfy backhaul requirements for 802.11ac wireless access points, but it soon became apparent the standard could be a useful upgrade alternative to Gigabit Ethernet. The speeds specified are 2.5 Gb/s and 5 Gb/s (or 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T, respectively).