Background and challenges
Managing a utility company is, in many ways, a logistical headache. Thousands of miles of power lines crisscross mountains, desert plains, and river canyons. Crews drive hours to reach job sites. When something breaks, every minute without power is felt by the customers on the other end of the line.
Idaho Power has been solving that problem since 1916. Headquartered in Boise, the company serves more than 600,000 residential, business, and agricultural customers across southern Idaho and eastern Oregon, a service territory shaped as much by rugged geography as by sheer size. With more than 2,100 employees and a stated goal of delivering 100 percent clean energy by 2045, Idaho Power operates at a scale that puts constant pressure on field operations to run efficiently and safely.
For years, connectivity was the weak link. Linemen working in remote areas had no reliable way to access work orders, update job statuses, or communicate with dispatch in real time. When a crew lost signal, they lost the ability to do much of their job. On top of that, supervisors had no visibility into what was happening in the field, and IT couldn't see the vehicles themselves. In an emergency, knowing where a crew was meant making phone calls and hoping someone picked up.
Idaho Power needed connectivity that could keep pace with its crews — secure enough for enterprise systems, reliable enough for remote terrain, and manageable enough that a lean IT team could support a fleet of hundreds.
“With over 200 trucks installed with the Ericsson Cradlepoint routers, we can have a centralized view of the trucks, the data being transferred, the status of communications — and we can deploy updates remotely, so it keeps our trucks in operation doing what they do."
Cody Shepherd, Sr. Manager of IT Operations, Idaho Power
Solution
A secure network in every truck
The first step was straightforward in concept and transformative in practice: put a secure, managed network inside every vehicle. Idaho Power deployed the routers across its fleet, each creating an encrypted tunnel back to corporate systems through NetCloud SASE Secure Connect. The truck itself became a connected work environment. Crews could pull up work orders, access digital maps, and communicate with dispatch from the cab, whether they were on a state highway or a dirt road an hour from the nearest town.
Equally important was what happened back at headquarters. NetCloud Manager gave Idaho Power's IT team centralized visibility and control across every connected vehicle in the fleet. Configurations could be pushed remotely, and device health could be monitored in real time. If a network problem occurred, the system surfaced it automatically, without the need for a truck roll to troubleshoot.
"If one was to have a problem, [the Ericsson solution] lets us know what's going on. We can remotely diagnose it and look at it, and if there's a situation where we need to know where our people are, we know exactly where they're at."
Cody Shepherd, Sr. Manager of IT Operations, Idaho Power
When there's no signal, crews bring their own
Cellular coverage handles most of what Idaho Power's crews encounter. But some of the company's most critical work happens in precisely the places where carrier networks don't reach: high mountain passes after a winter storm, remote substations hours from the nearest town, emergency response sites where infrastructure is already compromised.
For these situations, Idaho Power built flyaway kits: portable setups that pair satellite connectivity with a ruggedized Cradlepoint router to create a secure, on-demand link to corporate systems. The kits are built for field conditions. Crews can run them from a truck, mount them on a side-by-side, or set them up in a snow cat during a winter emergency response. The connection they provide is the same encrypted, managed tunnel that the in-vehicle solution delivers, just untethered from any fixed infrastructure.
"Our flyaway kit is a solution where we take satellite to create an internet connection and then a Cradlepoint modem to create a secure connection back to the corporate network for our crews. They can use them in the truck, or in a side-by-side, snow cat — in any emergency."
Alexandra DeYoung, IT Technical Systems Analyst, Idaho Power
What began as a fleet connectivity project became something more deliberate: a communications infrastructure built to follow Idaho Power crews wherever the work takes them, without requiring IT to reinvent the wheel each time the terrain changes.
Outcomes
- Crews connected in the field: Field teams have secure, reliable access to work orders, dispatch, and corporate systems from any location — no signal required.
- Fleet managed from headquarters: IT monitors, configures, and troubleshoots more than 200 connected vehicles remotely, keeping trucks in service and technicians off the road.
- Worker safety in the field: Real-time location visibility means Idaho Power always knows where its people are, enabling faster responses when conditions change unexpectedly.
- Infrastructure that scales with the mission: A connected vehicle platform that extended naturally to satellite-enabled field kits, adding capability without adding complexity.
200+
Service vehicles connected
600K+
Customers served across Idaho and Oregon
Looking ahead
The utility industry’s next decade will play out in remote, demanding environments, where aging infrastructure, clean energy expansion, and edge‑of‑grid work are making field operations increasingly complex. Idaho Power isn't waiting to find out what that looks like. With a connected fleet, centralized network visibility, and field-ready infrastructure that deploys anywhere, they are already operating in that future.
