PulseMesh provided the synchronized audio experience for the 2026 National Jamboree fireworks spectacular, an event viewed by approximately 12,000 people. PulseMesh reached 915 simultaneous listening devices across event Wi-Fi and three cellular networks, with attendees frequently listening together in groups.
The environment
A national jamboree is a large open-air camp event: the audience is spread across a wide site, seated on the ground and on hillsides, in the dark, watching a sky show that no one wants to look away from. That rules out most of the usual answers. A public-address system loud enough to cover the whole viewing area is a logistics project of its own, and FM covers the area but arrives at every listener a different way, on hardware most attendees do not carry.
Connectivity at an event like this is not one network. Attendees were on event Wi-Fi and on three different cellular networks, with the signal quality you would expect from thousands of phones in one field. PulseMesh is designed for exactly that condition: the network is used to distribute audio and to carry timing corrections, not to stream the show in real time.
The numbers
- ~12,000 — event audience, the number of people attending, as reported by the event organizers.
- 915 — peak simultaneous listening devices on PulseMesh during the show, measured by the platform.
- Event Wi-Fi + three cellular networks — the connectivity mix those devices arrived over.
These are two separate measurements of two different things, and we report them separately. See How we count for the definitions behind each figure.
Group listening is part of the design
At an event like this, one phone rarely equals one listener. Attendees share handsets, set one phone down for a circle of friends, and pair to Bluetooth speakers — all of which we encourage, because the sync holds across every device independently. A speaker in one camp and a phone in the next stay locked to the same timeline, which is what makes group listening work at all.
That behavior is also why we do not turn the two numbers above into a ratio. Audience size is a count of people, sourced from the organizers. Peak simultaneous listening devices is a count of endpoints, measured by the platform. We do not infer either one from the other, and neither figure should be read as a measurement of the other.
How the audio held together
The mechanism is the same one PulseMesh uses everywhere:
- Audio is pre-positioned on the device. The show audio is delivered to each phone ahead of playback, so the network is not in the critical path when the show starts.
- Every device follows a common clock. Playback position is derived from a shared timeline rather than from when a stream happened to arrive.
- Correction is continuous. Each device measures its own offset against that timeline throughout the show and adjusts, so a device that joins late, drops onto a different network, or hits congestion converges back rather than drifting for the rest of the show.
The practical consequence at scale is that a device on congested cellular and a device on event Wi-Fi are solving the same problem independently, and neither one has to be perfect for the audience to hear one soundtrack.
From the field
Attendee video from Buckskinner campVideo: Kevin Anderson, on Facebook ↗ (opens in new tab)Notes on the figures
Every number on this page is defined on the How we count page: what an event audience is, what a peak simultaneous listening device is, and why we never convert one into the other.