New IP phones in the White House

From a recent photo from the Oval Office, we learn that, probably last May, new telephones for non-secure calls have been installed in the White House. They replace older ones, that were used there since 1996.

The new devices are IP phones, which means they run over an internal packet-switched IP network, instead of a traditional circuit-switched telephone network.


The new Avaya 9608

The new device is a dark gray office phone, model 9608, made by Avaya, which is a leading American manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. Avaya was previously part of Lucent Technologies, which was a spin-off of AT&T.

This model is relatively simple, it's one that is commonly used in offices all over the world. It just has an average monochrome display - not a fancy color touch screen, like other high-end executive models from Avaya's 9600-series.

Although that may look nice, for the president such features would not be of much use, as most of his calls are made through an operator from the White House switchboard.

President Obama talks on his phone for secure calls with Secretary of State
John Kerry. In front of it there's the new Avaya 9608, July 13, 2015.
(White House photo by Pete Souza - Click to enlarge)

The new Avaya 9608 phone has no special security features, as it is used for all non-secure calls, both within and outside the White House.


The Cisco 7975G

For secure calls that have to be encrypted, the president uses the other phone on his desk, which is a Cisco 7975G Unified IP Phone (with expansion module 7916). This is also a very widely used high end office phone, and as such not specially secured itself, but here it is connected to the dedicated Executive Voice over Secure IP (VoSIP) network, which connects the White House with some of the most senior policy makers and provides the highest level of encryption.


The previous Lucent 8520

For non-secure calls, the new Avaya replaces the Lucent 8520T on Obama's desk. This Lucent phone was from the most widely used business phone series worldwide. It came in use in 1996, when the White House got a completely new telephone system, which was installed by AT&T and costed 25 million USD.

This new system consisted of an automated private branch exchange (PBX) with black executive phone sets models 8410 and 8520 from Lucent, with the large 8520 on the president's desk in the Oval Office:

The previous Lucent 8520 and the Cisco 7975 on Obama's desk, July 31, 2011
(White House photo by Pete Souza)

Before 1996, the White House still used the manual switchboard from the days of president Johnson. On the president's desk there was even the push button version of the Western Electric 18-button Call Director dating back to the 1960s. The installation of the new telephone system under president Clinton is also discussed in this television report:

NBC television on the new White House phone system (1996)

See also:

- Does Obama really lack cool phones?
- A White House staff phone

- Overview of older Presidential Telephones of the United States

A White House staff phone

Earlier, we discussed some of the phones which are used by the US president in his Oval Office. Now we have a picture of a telephone set which was used by White House staff members, presumably in the years around 1990, during the presidency of George H.W. Bush:

A White House staff phone from around 1990.
(Click for a bigger version)

This is a quite common corded telephone from the 900-series of AT&T. It has standard buttons for program, pause, flash, mute, hold, redial, volume and speaker, and also 16 programmable buttons for two entries each. Red lights indicate when the mute, hold and speaker functions are enabled.

Most distinctive is the big, customized sticker with the security warning "OFFICIAL USE ONLY - WHITE HOUSE NON-SECURE TELEPHONE - DO NOT USE FOR CLASSIFIED OR SENSITIVE INFORMATION"

Allthough there's always a small chance such a sticker could be fake, in this case it's most likely real. Apart from the fact that in real life such warnings are often different from what most people think based upon popular movies, we can also compare this phone with an earlier White House staff phone, which is shown below. On that phone we see almost exactly the same warnings (in black and red capitals) as on the first phone, only slightly different arranged:

A White House staff phone from the eighties.
(Click for a bigger version)

The phone in this picture is probably the same one as being displayed in the Icelandic Telecommunication Museum, and which seems to be left there by the presidential staff after the Reagan-Gorbatchev Reykjavík Summit in 1986.

For a nice overview of all earlier phones used in the White House, check the website of Adam Forrest. As we can see there, the president had another telephone in the Oval Office: a Western Electric 18-button Call Director, a type of phone which dates back to the 1960's.

The white AT&T phone in our first picture was probably used until 1996, when the White House got a completely new telephone system. This consisted of an automated private branch exchange (PBX) with black executive phone sets (models 8410 and 8520) from Lucent. Only by then, the old Western Electric at the president's desk was replaced by a high-end Lucent 8520 telephone. Except for a break of a few years, this phone is still there today. White House staff members nowadays also still use the Lucent/Avaya 8410 and 8250 phones.

Does Obama really lack cool phones?

(Updated: December 21, 2014)

In April last year, US president Obama told some fundraisers that he was disappointed by the communications equipment he found in the White House:

"I always thought I was gonna have like really cool phones and stuff," he said during a Q&A session with contributors at a fund-raising meeting in Chicago on April 14, 2011.

"We can't get our phones to work." Acting out his exasperation, he said: "Come on, guys. I'm the president of the United States! Where's the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up? It doesn't happen."

Obama made these remarks after the press pool had left and may not have realized some reporters back at the White House could still hear his comments. The president was probably responding to a question about bottlenecks in technological innovation and he used his White House experience as an example.

A lot of people would probably like to believe these remarks of the president, symbolizing the outdated state of the federal government. But in fact, what Obama said, isn't quite true.

In 2006-2007 president George W. Bush had the White House Situation Room completely renovated, providing it with state-of-the-art communications facilities. Since then the real Situation Room has all the phones and videoscreens and other stuff, which was before only seen in movies.

Also, when Obama took over the office in January 2009, he found quite a cool phone on the presidential desk in the Oval Office: an Integrated Services Telephone 2, or IST-2. This is a so called red phone (I'll explain that term in a later blog post) capable of making both secure and non-secure calls from one single instrument:

Not a cool phone? An IST-2 telephone on Obama's desk, March 29, 2009
(White House photo by Pete Souza)

The IST-2 was installed in the White House in 2007. It's a phone specially designed for the US Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN), which connects the president and the Pentagon with all major military command centers. These new phones were part of an upgrade of the communications system, which became necessary after some serious communication problems occured during the 9/11 attacks.

Therefore, the problems caused by outdated equipment should have been solved under president Bush. This would leave nothing to complain about for Obama anymore.

But there's an other interesting fact. Only a few weeks before Obama made his aforementioned remarks in April 2011, the rather rare IST-phone had just been replaced by two more ordinary sets:

The Cisco 7975 and the Lucent 8520 on Obama's desk, July 31, 2011
Also on the desk appears to be the iPad Obama got from Steve Jobs in May 2011
(White House photo by Pete Souza)

Now we see a Cisco 7975G Unified IP Phone (with expansion module 7916) behind a Avaya/Lucent 8520T on Obama's desk. This Lucent phone is from the most widely used business phone series worldwide, but is dating back to the mid-nineties. The Cisco 7975G is a VoIP (Voice over IP) telephone, and as such also one of the most widely used.

Both are high-end multiline models, with many functions and large displays, with the Cisco one even having a full colour touchscreen. This phone is also "cool", not because of having the military grade specifications or the exclusiveness like the IST-2, but because the phone (and its ringtone in particular) became an almost iconic item from the highly popular tv-series 24:

A Cisco 7970 IP Phone used in the CTU operations center in the tv-series 24
(screen cap by www.24tv.de)

This series, which was broadcasted between 2001 and 2010, shaped people's imagination of the presidency and was in many ways a forerunner of reality. For example there was a popular black president (David Palmer) years before Obama was elected, and much of the fancy communications equipment from the series, like video teleconferencing, was implemented in the real White House Situation Room in 2007. And now the real president also has the same cool Cisco phone as the heroes used in the tv-series.

So, as we have seen, Obama didn't really tell the truth. The story he told the fundraisers was true during the beginning of the Bush administration, but not during his. Obama actually has some quite cool phones at his disposal, but maybe the only thing is that he just doesn't realize that ;-)

Update:
A great picture of the phones Obama uses in the Oval Office was released on December 16, 2014, when he made a call, using the non-secure telephone, to president Raúl Castro of Cuba:

President Obama calling president Raúl Castro of Cuba, December 16, 2014
Also notice the specially secured Blackberry at his right hand
(White House Photo by Pete Souza - Click to enlarge)

Links
- Report on CBS News: Obama laments lack of "cool phones" at the White House
- About the renovation of the White House Situation Room
- Pictures of more "Obama Phones" at Cryptome.org
- Dutch article about Obama's gadgets at ZDNet.nl
- Extensive German fanpage of the 24-series

Inside the White House Situation Room

As the first post of this weblog about top level telecommunications we start with a nice video about the White House Situation Room, released by the White house on December 18, 2009:

 

As we can see from this video, the 2006-2007 renovation transformed the Situation Room from one simple conference room with a small office space into a multi room facility with high tech communications equipment, much like we see in fictional movies and tv-series.

At the same time, we also see that the Situation Room isn't the exclusive space for the president anymore. Many other government officials use the new conference rooms too for their (video conference) meetings.

The Situation Room is maintained by the White House Situation Support Staff (WHSSS), which was created ca. 1985 to oversee the Situation Room and the Crisis Management Center (CMC), which was set up in 1982 in the Old Executive Office Building and acted as a "second situation room". The WHSSS is nowadays part of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

The telephone equipment which is used in the Situation Room, will be discussed on this weblog later on.

More pictures and information about the White House Situation Room and its history can be found on the following website: www.whitehousemuseum.org.

An interesting article about the functioning of the Situation Room can be found amongst the CIA's Studies in Intelligence.

About the history of the Situation Room you can also read: Michael K. Bohn, Nerve Center: Inside the White House Situation Room, Brassey's Inc. Washington 2003.