---
title: "Public Sector & Smart City Software Development"
canonical: https://wavect.io/industries/public-sector-smart-city/
language: en
description: "IKB, Innsbruck's municipal utility for water, energy, waste, and telecom, had a Smart City build underway and needed engineering hands that ship. We worked …"
image: "https://wavect.io/img/general/bak/open_graph_preview.jpg"
---

INDUSTRY // PUBLIC SECTOR & SMART CITY

# Smart city infrastructure that runs at city scale, not pilot scale.

IKB, Innsbruck's municipal utility for water, energy, waste, and telecom, had a Smart City build underway and needed engineering hands that ship. We worked inside that build: extending and scaling the LoRaWAN infrastructure, evaluating and integrating multi-vendor hardware, writing the per-device codecs. We handed the platform over to IKB's in-house team completely, and stayed on call.

1 case studies

3 questions answered

4 related services

Shipped work

> “Smart city projects die in the gap between the pilot and the city. Twenty sensors on a test bench prove nothing about ten thousand on lamp posts.”

TL;DR

Engineering inside the Smart City build of Innsbruck’s municipal utility: LoRaWAN infrastructure scaling, multi-vendor device integration, per-device codecs. Handed over completely. Still on call.

// 01

## What we build in this industry

[IKB](/case-studies/ikb/) is the engagement this page stands on. Innsbrucker Kommunalbetriebe runs the critical infrastructure of a city: water, energy, waste, telecom. Their Smart City build was already moving when we joined, which is its own discipline: no greenfield, no rewrite fantasies, just an in-flight system that had to reach city scale, with IKB’s own people driving it.

Our lane in that build: extending and scaling the [LoRaWAN](/glossary/lorawan/) infrastructure on Kubernetes, evaluating and integrating multi-vendor hardware, and writing the uplink decoders and downlink encoders every new device type needed. That is [IoT platform engineering](/services/internet-of-things/) at city scale. We handed the platform over completely to IKB’s in-house team, documented, and stayed on call. Public infrastructure should not depend on its contractor’s availability, and this one does not.

Public sector work has a reputation for slideware. Our position is the opposite: the deliverable is a running system the utility’s own team operates, built as real [software engineering](/services/software-development/) rather than a pilot that never leaves the bench.

### Engineering inside in-flight builds

The IKB shape: join a project that is already moving, own clearly cut lanes (infrastructure, device integration, codecs), hand them over completely, and stay useful without making yourself permanent.

### IoT platform engineering

LoRaWAN and sensor-network backbones, device management, data pipelines, and the integration work between vendors who did not plan to talk to each other.

### Honest feasibility before procurement

Workshops and technical due diligence that rule out the wrong ideas before they cost a budget cycle. We have told institutions ’no’ on most of a technology wishlist, in writing.

// 02

## What makes this industry hard

### Pilots do not predict city scale

Radio coverage, battery budgets, and data volumes behave differently at ten thousand devices than at twenty. Scaling is not a bigger pilot, it is different engineering.

### Multi-vendor reality

Public infrastructure is bought in pieces from vendors with conflicting protocols and incentives. Someone has to own the integration layer end to end.

### The contractor must be removable

Public systems outlive contracts. We build, document, and hand over so the operator owns the system, then stay on call instead of staying indispensable.

// 03

## Shipped work in this industry

One engagement, one city, a complete handover. IKB's team runs the platform.

### [IKB](/case-studies/ikb/)
- **Status:** Live
- **Outcome:** Complete - Platform Handover
- **Summary:** Smart City IoT for Innsbruck: extended and scaled the LoRaWAN infrastructure, evaluated and integrated multi-vendor devices, wrote …
- **Stack:** Kubernetes, LoRaWAN, Docker

These are selected projects, not our full portfolio. We have shipped 75+ products since 2018.

// 04

## Related services & reading

- [SERVICE IoT Development](/services/internet-of-things/)
- [SERVICE Software Development](/services/software-development/)
- [SERVICE Software Quality Assurance](/services/software-quality-assurance/)
- [SERVICE AI Enablement](/services/ai-enablement/)
- [ARTICLE LoRaWAN vs NB-IoT vs Sigfox: real pilot costs](/blog/lorawan-nbiot-sigfox-pilot-cost/)
- [GUIDE How to choose a software development agency](/software-development-guide/how-to-choose-a-software-agency/)

// 05

## FAQs

### Do you handle public procurement processes?

We have delivered inside public-sector structures via IKB, Innsbruck’s municipal utility. For formal tender processes, we participate as the engineering partner; we do not pretend to be a procurement consultancy.

### Can you take over a smart city project that is stuck?

We know the adjacent shape from IKB: joining an in-flight build mid-stream and owning the lanes that need hands, infrastructure, device integration, codecs. Whether a full take-over or targeted reinforcement is the right move depends on what is actually stuck, and we will tell you which one we are seeing.

### Which IoT technologies do you work with?

The IKB backbone is LoRaWAN, and we have written publicly comparing LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, and Sigfox on real pilot costs. The honest answer is that the radio choice follows the use case, not the other way around.

Last reviewed: 2026-06-11 by [Kevin Riedl](/team/kevin-riedl/) [wiki ↗](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q139796365)

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