Boise company Cradlepoint helps NORAD track Santa

NORTH POLE – Santa doesn’t have 5G yet, but he’s getting closer.

“We just got Santa on the path of 5G,” said Todd Krautkremer, chief marketing officer for Cradlepoint Inc., a Boise-based networking hardware and software company.

Routers for NORAD

For several years now, Cradlepoint has been donating routers to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) for use in its Santa-tracking project, NORAD Tracks Santa, based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.

The routers help provide a cellular connection used by the 1,500 volunteers who work on the NORAD Tracks Santa program, answering phone calls from the young and young at heart who want to find out where Santa Claus happens to be at that particular moment.

“NORAD is a very secure facility with very secure communications,” Krautkremer said. “The last thing they want to do is open it to a whole bunch of inbound calls. The answer to that was, let’s put in a cellular connection. It’s a completely separate line that doesn’t use their infrastructure.”

In fact, NORAD was the one who asked for help from Cradlepoint, Krautkremer said.

“They contacted Cradlepoint, and we were more than happy to oblige,” he said. “Where we get into the picture is that they have as many as 1,500 people who man the phones and 140,000 incoming calls from children who want to know, ‘Where’s Santa?’” he said. “We provide connectivity for the children to call in and talk to the volunteers.”

This isn’t the first time Cradlepoint has donated equipment for this purpose.

“We do a lot of things like this for the greater good, if you will,” Krautkremer said. “In the Houston floods with Hurricane Harvey, we were down there providing free equipment. With floods and fires and all sorts of natural disasters, we are there. This is one of the more fun stories we get to be part of.”

The NORAD project received top-of-the-line gigabit LTE routers, Krautkremer said.

“Our hope, in the next couple of years, is to get the NORAD Santa tracker on 5g,” he said.

The routers also include management functionality, security features, content filtering, support for multiple modems and carriers and sufficient bandwidth and reliability, he said.

“We didn’t skimp on the solution.”

Why does NORAD track Santa?

In case you’ve missed the story, the Continental Air Defense Command, the predecessor of NORAD, started tracking Santa in 1955.

“The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement misprinted the telephone number for children to call Santa,” notes the organization’s website. “Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations ‘hotline.’ The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.”

Now more than 70 companies help contribute to the NORAD Tracks Santa project, which gains new features every year, said Preston Schlachter, NORAD Tracks Santa program manager. This year, for example, the website offers decreased load time and a new suite of games, he said.

More than 200 countries gain access to the website for the 30 days it is open, Schlachter said. Last year, there were more than 15 million sessions. Needless to say, Christmas Eve is the website’s highest-use time, he said.

But while the website – with animation showing Santa’s location – is popular, along with other new-fangled components such as social media, NORAD continues making phone calls available.

“In a world full of dark and gloomy news, it’s such a wonderful story,” Krautkremer said. “We make sure they’re up to date with the latest gear.”