Santa flies on Christmas Eve. Kids want to know where he is. Boise company lends a hand

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 networking hardware and software company.

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

Beginning at 2 a.m. Mountain time on Christmas Eve, children can reach out to volunteers for updates on Santa’s location via phone and www.noradsanta.org, and on Amazon Alexa, OnStar, social media and the NORAD app. The phone number is 1-877-Hi-NORAD (1-877-446-6723).

Cradlepoint’s routers help provide a cellular connection used by the 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.”

NORAD 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?’ We provide connectivity for the children to call in and talk to the volunteers.”

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 Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD’s predecessor, started tracking Santa more than 60 years ago.

“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.”

The project also features a website, with animation showing Santa’s location. 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 online sessions. Christmas Eve is the site’s highest-use time, he said.

This year, the website offers decreased load time and a new suite of games.

More than 70 companies help contribute to the NORAD Tracks Santa project, said Preston Schlachter, the program manager.

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

“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. ... This is one of the more fun stories we get to be part of.”

This story, originally posted Dec. 24, 2019, was updated Dec. 18, 2020.

This story was originally published December 24, 2019 at 6:00 AM.