Systems and methods for over-the-air (OTA) updating of data stored on Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) devices are provided. Such techniques enable updates to be provided on a timely basis for NB-IoT devices that lack short message service (SMS) capabilities, through polling an OTA update server in response to the occurrence of triggering events at the NB-IoT devices. Triggering events may be identified based upon conditions such as time since a previous update attempt or number of times the NB-IoT device has awoken since the previous update attempt. The updates may include updates to network lists used by the NB-IoT devices to determine preferred or forbidden networks, thereby reducing battery drain from repeated attempts to connect to inaccessible networks.