Athens runs NB-IoT and LoRaWAN parking sensors on one platform

Novoville, a civic technology company that builds digital services for municipalities, runs Fleximodo in-ground parking sensors in Athens, Greece. The project went live in 2026 and uses two radio networks side by side: part of the sensors report over NB-IoT, the rest over LoRaWAN. Every sensor feeds the same Fleximodo backend.

What did Novoville need?

Novoville needed one parking system that could work across more than one type of network from day one.

The two technologies suit different places. NB-IoT runs on a mobile operator's network, so a sensor needs no local gateway and works wherever there is cellular coverage. LoRaWAN needs gateways, but one gateway can serve many bays on a compact site such as a car park or a dense block. A city project that mixes both kinds of site would otherwise end up with two separate tools.

What was installed?

The deployment uses the IoT Parking Sensor Standard in two variants:

• Sensor Standard, NB-IoT, in-ground, connected over Deutsche Telekom's NB-IoT service
• Sensor Standard, LoRaWAN, in-ground
• Backend and monitoring for both variants in one platform
• Onboarding and setup: system configuration, sensor mapping (each sensor tied to its bay on the map), user accounts and roles, hands-on training for the Novoville team, and written guidance

Both variants share the same detection core: a magnetometer combined with radar, the setup behind Fleximodo's 99.96% detection accuracy. Both are installed in the road surface, so there is nothing on top of the bay to be hit or removed.

Because the hardware is the same apart from the radio, the team learns one installation method and one set of tools. The training covered both networks so the Novoville team can run the system on its own.

What does the city get from it?

Athens gets live occupancy data for each monitored bay, whichever network the sensor uses. In practice that means:

• One view of all bays. Operators see NB-IoT and LoRaWAN sensors on the same map and dashboards.
• A free choice of network per site. New zones can be added on whichever network fits, without a second platform.
• Data that can travel. Occupancy data can be passed to other municipal systems through the Fleximodo API.
• Local know-how. Novoville's own team handles day-to-day operation after the training.

For cities weighing up parking digitalisation, the Athens setup shows that the network decision does not have to be made once for the whole city.