Help:Type Telephone number

The datatype telephone number is used for international telephone numbers that are to be stored in a standardized format. The datatype will try to interpret the phone number according to CiteRef::ietf:rfc:3966 so that it can be exported in a machine-readable format using  URIs.

Applications that do not need any re-use or validation of telephone numbers can also use datatype to store arbitrary human-readable phone number strings.

Declaration and Usage
A property of this type can be declared by writing  on the property page.

Values of this property are complete phone number strings including country code. It is allowed to use the symbols " ", " ", " ", or " " to structure phone numbers in a readable way. These symbols will be used for the display of the data. Note that for the storage of data only the symbols " ", " ", " " are used but not a space. If spaces were specified for display a hyphen will however be used for storage, e.g. "+49-30-45-08-49-40" instead of "+49 30 45 08 49 40". The reason for this is that though the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) recommends the use of space characters as visual separators in printed telephone numbers by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) defines that URIs for telephone numbers MUST NOT use spaces in visual separators to avoid excessive escaping.CiteRef::ietf:rfc:3966:511

Global numbers must always start with " " or " ". Optionally, it is allowed to write the CiteRef::ietf:rfc:3966 URI prefix "tel:" in front of any telephone number.

The datatype does not support local numbers (without global country code). Moreover, it is not allowed to use vanity numbers since the mapping from letters to numbers is not standardized internationally.

Examples
Below are some examples of correct phone numbers:

Has telephone number::+353-91-555560 Has telephone number::00353-91-555560
 * Preferred annotations

Has telephone number::+353.91.555559 Has telephone number::+353 91 555561 Has telephone number::+ 353 91 555562 Has telephone number::+353 91 5 55563 Has telephone number::+353/91/555564 Has telephone number::00353 91 555565 Has telephone number::00353 / 91555566
 * Allowed annotations

It is allowed to write in front of any of these examples, as in. Moreover, some special fields are also allowed (see CiteRef::ietf:rfc:3966 for explanation): Has telephone number::tel:+353-91-555560;postd=pp22 Has telephone number::tel:+1234567890;phone-context=+1234;vnd.company.option=foo

The following examples are not allowed and will lead to errors: Has telephone number::+353 (0) 91 555555 Has telephone number::(00353 91) 55 55 55 Has telephone number::+353-91-55555-5/-6 Has telephone number::091 555 555 Has telephone number::+353-91-CALLME Has telephone number::+353-91-55555-5 after 6pm Has telephone number::+-353-91-55555-5 Has telephone number::+1
 * Invalid annotations

Semantic search
Using telephone number properties for searching pages can be done in a similar fashion as for all other properties; see Help:Semantic search. As with any property, you can use the " " wildcard to select all pages with some value for a telephone number property, for example.