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Whether you’re tuning in to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from home or watching it IRL in NYC, Verizon aims to ensure all viewers can enjoy the festivities without a glitch.
The 2.5-mile-long parade—which drew 28.5 million viewers on NBC and its streaming platform, Peacock, last year—relies heavily on the use of 5G networks and fiber optic cables to facilitate the viewing experience. While viewers snap photos for their feed, Verizon works behind the scenes to make sure all those memories get captured seamlessly.
Catherine Clouse, an associate director at Verizon, told Tech Brew that while much of the planning remains routine, evolving tech means year-round upgrades.
This year, Verizon’s focus is on viewers’ heavy data use, including streaming, video calls, and uploading pictures.
“Back in the original days, it was just phone calls or texts,” Clouse said. “Now we’re seeing video uploads, FaceTiming occurring during the parade, and that’s certainly a bigger impact to the network…That’s why we’re expanding our capacity to care for that.”
To adapt to the evolving needs, Verizon enhanced 5G capacity for around 20 sites along the parade route, focused primarily near the entry and exit points, as well as the balloon inflation area.
But while the Macy’s parade is a super-sized undertaking, Clouse said it runs like a well-oiled machine thanks to practice runs.
One of those tests occurs at the finish line of the New York City Marathon, where the parade’s balloon inflation is also held. This year, Verizon noted a 200% increase in 5G usage during the November 3 marathon, and the service upgrades helped bear that load, Clouse said.
And for those living in New York, there’s a perk beyond hosting friends in your Central Park West pied-à-terre: After the parade ends, Verizon’s augmentations will remain permanent, Clouse said.
While Verizon’s efforts to keep everyone connected are something to be thankful for, Clouse explained the objective is always for the work to go unnoticed.
“Our goal is that they have no idea about these enhancements, and they are just downloading their pictures, uploading their pictures, streaming video if they want, and making phone calls,” Clouse said. “So to a customer, they should see or feel no interruption in any of those network actions that they want to take.”