JBG Smith Invests $25M To Accelerate 5G Rollout In National Landing

JBG Smith is looking to further its positioning of National Landing as a technology hub with a new investment in creating a 5G network.

The developer announced Monday it paid $25.3M to acquire seven broadcasting licenses that span over 16.2M SF of real estate in the National Landing neighborhood.

The licenses are for 70 megahertz of Citizens Broadband Radio Service spectrum and were acquired as part of a Federal Communications Commission auction. The spectrum bands were previously used by the Department of Defense and enable broadcasting on frequencies that fall within the 5G standard. 

Four of the licenses are in Arlington, where JBG Smith is partnering with Amazon on its second headquarters, and three are in Alexandria, where it is partnering with Virginia Tech on its new campus. 

The acquisition marks the first time JBG Smith has invested in broadband licenses, and the developer hopes it will better position National Landing as a hub for innovation. JBG Smith can offer access to the licenses to tenants that want to create private 5G networks, and it plans to partner with technology companies to create a large-scale public 5G offering across the neighborhood.  

“We pursued ownership in spectrum to accelerate the roll-out of a ubiquitous 5G network in National Landing," JBG Smith CEO Matt Kelly said in a release. "We are eager to attract best-in-class service providers, so that our customers — the people that live, work, and play in National Landing — have the connectivity tools needed to innovate in an increasingly digital and flexible post-COVID economy.”