Built for a Province-Sized Mission
The Alberta Sheriffs Branch, which operates under the Government of Alberta, is one of the province's largest public safety organizations. With personnel based in 57 offices across Alberta, the Branch supports a broad range of enforcement and protective functions, including highway patrol, court security, prisoner transport, protective services, fugitive apprehension, and fish and wildlife enforcement.
Supporting these operations requires a diverse fleet that operates in urban centers, along major transportation corridors, and in some of Alberta's most remote regions. The fleet includes prisoner transport vans, patrol vehicles, motorcycles, covert surveillance vehicles, heavy-duty trucks, and mobile operations centers used to support public safety operations across the province.
All of those vehicles are distributed across 57 offices throughout the province, from Fort Chipewyan near the Northwest Territories to Coutts on the U.S. border. No surprise that getting reliable GPS visibility across a province that size has been an ongoing challenge.
The Challenge
For years, the Branch tracked its vehicles through Sierra Wireless MP70 modems, which were installed primarily to provide data connectivity for in vehicle laptops and CAD system integration. The modems included an OBD-II pigtail and fed an automatic vehicle location (AVL) system, but the arrangement came with significant limitations.
The modems offered a much more limited list of vehicles that could accurately read the ECU data. This introduced several challenges, particularly odometer data and speed reporting.
The most persistent problem was odometer data. Rather than reading the vehicle’s actual current odometer value, the system tracked incremental changes from the value entered at installation. According to Chris Eddy, Manager of Technology and Information Services, “Even if the system was reading an odometer value straight from the engine, instead of reading the current odometer value, it read the state change on the odometer.”
When vehicles were moved without resetting the modem, the mileage figures became very unreliable. Fleet decisions, maintenance scheduling, and compliance reporting all depended on mileage data that the team simply could not trust.
“When vehicles were moved without resetting the modem, the odometer values didn't always reflect the accuracy we needed. As a result, mileage reporting became a challenge for fleet management."
Speed reporting had similar shortcomings. The system relied on GPS-derived speed by calculating velocity from the distance between position pings rather than reading directly from the vehicle’s ECU. For routine fleet management, this might be acceptable; but a law enforcement agency that regularly investigates complaints about vehicle handling and conducts after-the-fact incident reviews needs more precise speed data.
The platform’s history replay was also very limited, retaining only about 30 to 40 days of data. Running a playback search was a slow process that made reviewing multiple days or multiple vehicles across an investigation genuinely difficult. IntelliHub retains unlimited telematics history, a meaningful difference for an agency where incident reviews can surface months or years after the fact.
Additionally, the modem-based system also required a full one- to two-hour installation with tools, mounting hardware, and antenna cabling, which meant it was impractical to deploy in covert surveillance vehicles or in the admin fleet, which didn’t need CAD integration and was simply left without GPS visibility.
The decision point came when the Branch began a major rollout of a new in-car systems running on Ericsson Cradlepoint modems. The Branch needed a dedicated tracking solution that could sit alongside Ericsson Cradlepoint, cover the full fleet, and deliver the accurate, vehicle-native data they hadn’t been able to rely on.
A Solution Built for the Complexity
FTS's native Ericsson Cradlepoint integration resolved the technical constraint that made other solutions a non-starter. Through Ericsson NetCloud Manager, FTS pushes fleet tracking capabilities directly to existing Cradlepoint hardware. By connecting an OBD-II device, the Branch gained access to previously unavailable ECM data, including accurate odometer readings, engine fault codes, real-time vehicle speed, and more.
Both the OBD-II tracker and the Ericsson Cradlepoint report independently to IntelliHub as separate units, giving the Branch two complete streams of fleet visibility running in parallel. In practice, that means comprehensive coverage across every vehicle with built-in continuity.
The OBD-II connection addressed the data quality problem directly. For a law enforcement agency that regularly conducts after-the-fact incident reviews, GPS-estimated speed simply isn’t precise enough. When a complaint is filed about a vehicle’s speed or handling, the fleet manager needs to know precisely what the speedometer was showing the driver at the time. “If the OBD-II tracker is telling me the speedometer was displaying 149 KPH (93 MPH) in a 110 KPH (68 MPH) zone, I can say, what were you doing?”, said Chris Eddy, Manager of Technology and Information Services. “Everything after that was just nice to have.”
“If the OBD-II tracker is telling me the speedometer was displaying 149 KPH in a 110 KPH zone, I can say, what were you doing? Everything after that was just nice to have.”
The installation profile changed what was even possible. A full modem installation required one to two hours, tools, drilling, and left visible hardware that made any vehicle identifiable as law enforcement. The OBD-II tracker averages about 15 minutes to install, though Eddy says that a technician working quickly can get a tracker installed in 5-6 minutes. The install requires no specialized tools and leaves no visible footprint. Covert surveillance vehicles can now be equipped without any visible modification.
The speed of installation also removed the logistical challenge of getting vehicles into a shop. “You can do it anywhere,” said Eddy. “You don't need a full shop to retrofit vehicles.” Because many vehicles are deployed in active operations and have limited downtime, finding opportunities for traditional installations can be difficult. In one instance, technicians were able to meet a unit during a brief window of availability and equip eight vehicles in roughly 45 minutes, minimizing disruption to operations.
Faster Investigations. Trustworthy Data.
The most immediate operational benefit has been complaint response. As a government agency operating across a large province, the Branch occasionally receives complaints regarding vehicle speed and handling. Speed reports, harsh acceleration, harsh braking data, and route playbacks are now available in seconds rather than requiring a multi-step search process that previously took around 10 minutes per query. “That has been one of the biggest improvements on my side,” said Eddy.
Reliable engine data has improved fleet management across the province as well. With only two fleet service locations in Calgary and Edmonton, the fleet team had limited ability to physically assess vehicles in remote areas. Engine fault code reporting through IntelliHub now allows staff to identify issues remotely and direct officers in remote locations to take their vehicles to a local dealer before a minor problem becomes an out-of-service event. Utilization reports have helped managers identify when available vehicles are going unused, providing data to push back on requests for additional procurement.
Engine hours reporting has proven especially valuable for prisoner transport vehicles, which idle for extended periods throughout every shift. In Alberta’s challenging climate, these vehicles must stay running whenever detainees are on board to maintain acceptable conditions for the people inside. Mileage figures alone don’t capture the wear that results from that kind of continuous idling. Highway Patrol vehicles face similar conditions during checkstops, when a vehicle may sit running for hours with lights, computers, and equipment all drawing power.
IntelliHub’s automatic VIN reading has surfaced an unexpected benefit by resolving vehicle documentation discrepancies. Previously, someone had to physically locate a vehicle and read the VIN from the engine block. On two occasions since deployment, the system’s authoritative VIN data caught identification errors that would otherwise have required a manual search.
And then there are the motorcycles. Highway Patrol operates a fleet of Harley Davidsons that had never generated any telematics data before. The FTS supplied GPS trackers are now installed on several of them and returning engine statistics for the first time.
We've never had access to this kind of data from our motorcycles before. Having that visibility has been extremely valuable for our fleet team.”
Looking Ahead
The Branch’s FTS deployment sits within a broader in-car technology rollout that approached $3 million across all vehicles. Against that backdrop, the cost of the IntelliHub systems and GPS trackers was a rounding error, according to Eddy, making the decision an easy one.
As part of that rollout, the deployment continues to expand, with roughly 70% of the fleet already equipped and full provincial coverage expected by end of summer 2026. The team is also planning to fully configure all 57 office locations within IntelliHub and assign vehicles to each, enabling location-based utilization analysis that will show how much time each vehicle spends at its home base versus in the field.
“For all that value at such a low price, it was such a no-brainer as soon as we heard the price after we’d seen all the features. We definitely recommend it to anyone.”
As deployment continues across the fleet, the Alberta Sheriffs Branch plans to further expand its use of IntelliHub's reporting and analytics capabilities.
Operating a diverse fleet across 57 locations requires reliable, accurate, and accessible vehicle data. By combining Ericsson Cradlepoint integration with direct ECU data and fleet-wide visibility through IntelliHub, the Branch has established a scalable fleet management platform that supports its operations today and provides a foundation for future growth.