NB-IoT
The carrier-run alternative to LoRaWAN: cellular narrowband for sensors. The choice between the two is a choice about who owns the network.
How this list is decided. Membership is not a field an editor set: it is every published entry whose own text names NB-IoT, matched at build time, with the sentence printed under each row so you can judge the match yourself. 5 entries in 5 cities.
✔ Every published entry is checked against the public sources it cites before publication.
Where it appears in the atlas
Busan's Water Authority has been replacing analogue water meters with IoT smart meters since a 2018 pilot, running them over the city's own LoRa network alongside commercial NB-IoT.
Since a 2018 rollout of 1,900+ NB-IoT parking sensors feeding a real-time occupancy map, Dubrovnik added a 2025 ANPR-based access-control zone around the Old Town to curb UNESCO-flagged overtourism congestion; a 572-space Park 'n' Ride at Pobrežje is under construction, targeted for completion around 2028.
While Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Wuhan shut down their public bike schemes once dockless rivals arrived, Hangzhou kept investing: since a 2022 pilot, NB-IoT electronic locks let bikes park at virtual "stations" with no physical rack.
Thames Water, the UK's largest water and wastewater company, has installed over 1.2 million smart water meters connected over Vodafone's NB-IoT network, with about a further million homes and businesses planned by 2030 under a £50 million framework signed in November 2024.
Since 2019, Tianjin Water Group has been replacing residential analogue meters with remote-read NB-IoT smart meters that report consumption automatically and enable app-based (Alipay/WeChat) bill payment.
Others in this group
The whole layer
Every standard, protocol and licence the atlas names, with the open-data licence ladder in one table: Standards & licences.