[VoiceOps] Help Requested: E.123 Intl Formatting in Google libphonenumber

[Peter Beckman]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2022, Darren wrote:

> Why spaces for NANPA? This is very unusual. Is that written in a standard
> somewhere? I'm not sure on the other two but in the US there are users
> who actually would be confused seeing spaces.

  International Format. How the rest of the world formats their phone
  numbers, even if they might use parenthesis and dashes when writing the
  phone number for local consumption.

  US users also are confused by the metric system, despite it being used by
  98% of the all other countries and 95.3% of all other humans on earth.


> On 3/2/22, 8:26 PM, "VoiceOps on behalf of Peter Beckman"
> <voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org on behalf of beckman at angryox.com> wrote:
>
>    E.164 doesn't include formatting for humans.
>
>         E.164 => +12125004000
>         E.123 => +1 212 500 4000 (International)
>               => (212) 500-4000 (National)
>               => 212-500-4000 (National)
>
>    We utilize E.164 when we want our servers to discuss phone numbers.
>
>    We utilize E.123 when we want to convert the E.164 phone number into
>    something more useful for human consumption.
>
>    It's kind of like IPv4 addresses: A 32-bit number is harder to remember
>    than 4 8-bit numbers each separated by a period.
>
>    The crux of the issue is that 168 countries' International Format in
>    libphonenumber looks like
>
>         +44 207 597 2524
>         +39 4324 8893
>
>    Whereas Ecuador, Argentina, and the NANPA countries are:
>
>         +1 212-500-4000
>         +593 4-443-3335
>         +54 2222 22-2224
>
>    My argument is that NANPA, Argentina, and Ecuador should be formatted for
>    International as:
>
>         +1 212 500 4000
>         +593 4 443 3335
>         +54 2222 22 2224
>
>    Beckman
>
>    On Thu, 3 Mar 2022, Oren Yehezkely wrote:
>
>    > Peter,
>    >
>    > I thought during all those years that the standard is called E.164.
>    > I also thought that a phone number has no spaces or dashes. These are only
>    > added to help humans read the phone numbers.
>    >
>    > We also used the libphonenumber and I think it is great to help us
>    > standardize.
>    > It works for all countries so I am not sure what's missing.
>    > I am sure you can add anything that you want after you normalize the number
>    > using the function.
>    >
>    > Thanks,
>    > Oren
>    >
>    >
>    >
>    >
>    > On Wed, Mar 2, 2022, 22:04 Peter Beckman <beckman at angryox.com> wrote:
>    >
>    >> Hey all --
>    >>
>    >> I hope and trust that most of you are fans of standards.
>    >>
>    >> I need some help convincing Google's libphonenumber team to follow the
>    >> published ITU E.123 Number Formatting standard for +1 NANPA, Ecuador, and
>    >> Argentina.
>    >>
>    >> tl;dr -- Please comment in support here:
>    >>
>    >> https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/221095104
>    >>
>    >>
>    >> Long Version:
>    >>
>    >> I love standards. They are often unambiguous and organize all of us around
>    >> a common understanding of how we are going to interoperate. Everything we
>    >> do in our daily work can be tied back to a standard:
>    >>
>    >>      - TCP/IP, hell the whole OSI Model
>    >>      - SIP, RTP
>    >>      - ITU E.164, E.123, SS7, ISDN, DSL
>    >>      - DNS, Email, TLS/SSL
>    >>
>    >> It seems weird that an International company like Google, who practically
>    >> exists ONLY BECAUSE these standards existed for Google to emerge from, is
>    >> being picky about implementing a phone number formatting standard published
>    >> in 2008.
>    >>
>    >> The crux:
>    >>      168 countries use spaces in their International Format
>    >>        2 countries outside of +1 NANPA, Ecuador and Argentina have dashes
>    >>       25 countries in +1 NANPA all use +1 NPA-NXX-XXXX as the International
>    >>            Format
>    >>
>    >> ITU E.123 states in 9.1:
>    >>
>    >>      Only spaces should be used in an international number.
>    >>
>    >> Thus the correct output would be '+1 NPA NXX XXXX' for the INTERNATIONAL
>    >> format.
>    >>
>    >> I'm all for using (NPA) NXX-XXXX or NPA-NXX-XXXX for any of the other
>    >> formats.
>    >>
>    >> I'm just trying to get support from the community to get rid of Dashes
>    >> entirely in the INTERNATIONAL Format of phone numbers.
>    >>
>    >> Your support and comment is appreciated.
>    >>
>    >> Beckman
>    >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>    >> Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
>    >> beckman at angryox.com
>    >> https://www.angryox.com/
>    >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>    >>
>    >
>
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>    Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
>    beckman at angryox.com                                https://www.angryox.com/
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Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
beckman at angryox.com                                https://www.angryox.com/
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