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(Updated: December 29, 2015) In an earlier posting on this weblog we took a look at the phones used by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which included an eye-catching red one. In some more recent pictures we can see that this red phone has apparently been replaced by an interesting looking white telephone. Although this device itself is white, it has a rarely seen but very distinctive feature: a red curly cord for the handset and also a red cable for the phone line. The buttons are also surrounded by some kind of red overlay: Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, meets with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, July 26, 2014 in Tel Aviv. (Photo: Handout/Getty - Click to enlarge) The dark gray phone at the left is a more common Nortel M3904 executive phone - a model which is also used at the NSA headquaters and at the office of the British prime minister. Nortel was a big Canadian telephone equipment manufacturer, but was dissolved in...

(UPDATED: March 5, 2016) Today, it's exactly 50 years ago that the famous Washington-Moscow Hotline became operational. Allthough this link has always been for written communications only, many people think there are red telephones on the Hotline, as this is often depicted in popular culture. One wide-spread image is from the article about the Hotline on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It shows a non-dial red telephone which is on display in the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta, Georgia: (photo uploaded to Wikimedia by user Piotrus under CC-BY-SA) Much of the confusion about the real purpose of this phone was due to the fact that in this picture, the text on the plate below the phone wasn't readable. But now, upon request of this weblog, the curator of the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum kindly provided the text, which reads as follows: RED PHONE During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, the “red phone” was a hotline to the Kremlin in Moscow. A U.S. president could pick...

(Updated: March 7, 2017) On February 1st, senator John Kerry became the new US Secretary of State, succeeding Hillary Clinton, who held this office since January 2009. John Kerry is just two weeks in office, but we already have a nice picture of him in his new office: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks by telephone with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from his Inner Office at the Department of State, February 5, 2013. ( State Department photo ) This picture is taken in the so called inner or private office, which is next to the bigger ceremonial office , where the secretary of state is most often seen, receiving and talking to his guests. The smaller private office is used for the actual work, and therefore that's also where the phones are (the US president also has a rarely seen private office, next to the ceremonial Oval Office). On the desk we see a Cisco 7975 unified IP phone with a 7916 expansion module. With a close look we can see that the phone has a yellow facep...

(Updated: December 29, 2015) Based upon popular culture, many people think both the US and Russian presidents have a red telephone on their desks, as part of the famous Hotline between both countries. In a previous article we showed that the Washington-Moscow Hotline is not even a telephone line, let alone there are red phones at both ends. But, as we can see in the picture below, the prime minister of Isreal does have a red phone on his desk: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) and defence minister Ehud Barak hold talks in the prime minister's office (Photo: Ariel Hermoni/Defense Ministry/Flash90, November 2012) The dark gray phone at the right, which Netanyahu is using, is a high-end Nortel M3904 executive phone - a model which is also used at the NSA headquaters and at the office of the British prime minister. Nortel was a big Canadian telephone equipment manufacturer, but was dissolved in 2009. The Enterprise Voice and Data division of Nortel was bought by t...

Last week, David Petraeus resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), after admitting he had an extramarital affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell. This led to many news reports and also many pictures on the internet. Some of them give a nice look at the telecommunications equipment which general Petraeus used when, from July 2010 to July 2011, he was commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, Afghanistan: ISAF Commander Petraeus being interviewed by Paula Broadwell (Photo: paulabroadwell.com, date unknown) In this picture we see the following telecommunication devices: Video conferencing screens On Petraeus' desk we see two Centric 1700 MXP video teleconferencing screens, made by the Norwegian manufacturer Tandberg . In 2010 this company was bought by Cisco Systems, and so the 1700 MXP screens are often used by US military officials. They are equipped with a HD camera and have a widescreen LCD screen, which operates both a...