BOISE, Idaho — Starting on Christmas Eve, everyone can track Santa Claus’ journey delivering presents around the world from your computer or even your phone through the NORAD Santa Tracker. Here's something you might not know, a Boise-based company may not know when or if you're naughty or nice, but they do help NORAD follow Kris Kringle around the globe.
NORAD has been tracking Santa's present deliveries with its Santa tracker for 66 years. Cradlepoint has been helping NORAD track Jolly Ol' Saint Nick's journey for more than a decade. Kids around the world can track Santa's every move through various mediums like a website.
“Where they get over two million visits, they can access via phone calls where they get 150-thousand phone calls from kids wanting to track Santa's journey across the skies on Christmas Eve or even on Facebook where they've got over two million likes,” said Todd Krautkremer, chief marketing officer at Cradlepoint.
He says the Santa Tracker is all based on Cradlepoint equipment. The company unlocks the value of the LTE and now 5G cellular networks for businesses, and with this equipment, they're helping unlock the magic of Santa’s busiest night.
“You can imagine how secure that facility is and they're not just going to let anybody connect into their physical connections and that's why they're using Cradlepoint to completely isolate the Santa tracker application and all of the connections from people from the core network of NORAD,” Krautkremer said.
Tracking Santa all started when a child called an unlisted phone number that was misprinted in a department store Christmas ad. She believed it was the number for Santa Claus, but it ended up being the number for the command operations center. That encounter sparked the NORAD Santa Tracker.
“My grandson tomorrow night will be logged onto the Santa Tracker and tracking Santa’s journey to the skies toward North Carolina and kids all over the world connect … so it's very gratifying,” Krautkremer said.
He adds, they’re already thinking about next year and hope it’ll be on a 5G network.
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