White House struggles with muting function on Iran conference call with reporters
Source: CBS News
It took the White House twenty-two minutes to figure out how to enable the "listening only" feature on a conference call on Thursday where senior administration officials announced that President Trump would continue to waive nuclear program-related sanctions, keeping the deal intact.
"This White House can't even run a f*cking conference call," a reporter on an unmuted phone line angrily exclaimed to the entire call. "They don't know how to mute their line."
"It's the illegitimate media that doesn't know how to conduct themselves. They can't mute their f*cking phones," an unidentified official said. "Mute your phones."
Another White House official repeatedly attempted to quiet the noisy line "so the people in charge" could talk.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-house-struggles-with-muting-function-on-iran-conference-call-with-reporters/
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It's a Cisco CP-8811, or a model awfully close to it.
The phone uses VoIP technology. The phone it replaced in my cubicle plugged into a phone jack, but this one is connected to my laptop computer. It generates so much trash that I'm lucky to get WTOP (an FM station, at 103.5 MHz) in my cubicle. The RF trash this thing generates is off the wall. I don't the FCC has cared about AM or shortwave interference in a long, long time.
The phone was probably chosen for the Oval Office on the grounds that it would render useless any Russian-placed listening device.
Hint: "mute" is the button in the lower right hand corner.
I have been on hundreds of similar conference calls where you hear all sorts of stuff coming across the call - dogs barking, people laughing and talking to others in the room or out in the hall, cars honking, vacuum cleaners going on in the background, sirens from outside the facility blaring, doors slamming - and people yelling "Mute your PHONE!!!! WOULD YOU MUTE YOUR PHONE!!!!11!!!!"!!!! And THEN the echo chamber suddenly happens when a feedback loop gets triggered, where you hear someone say "HELLO HELLo HELlo HEllo Hello hello" and then loud static and then someone with the conference leader role finally kills the call to put it out of its misery and start over....
But yes, those types of high-level conference bridges have a feature that should have some key combo that like " *5 " or whatever, to automatically mute all those who call in, whether via a land line, cell phone, or through VOIP.
