title: Is there a standard for phone numbers?
body: <p><strong>Before you say that this has already been asked</strong>, know that I've already reviewed these:</p>
  <ul>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41925/is-there-a-standard-for-storing-normalized-phone-numbers-in-a-database">Is there a standard for storing normalized phone numbers in a database?</a> - This is from 2008, and says that, at the time, there was no such standard. <strong>I'm hoping that something changed in the last 13 years.</strong></li>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/123559/a-comprehensive-regex-for-phone-number-validation?lq=1">How to validate phone numbers using regex</a> - I already have the parse; it's quite easy: If it's not a digit, skip it. <strong>This question is not about the parser, but the format in which I save/display it.</strong> I am not worried about how hard it is to parse, but whether it's in standard format.</li>
  </ul>
  <hr />
  <p>Say I'm working on a program that has to deal with phone numbers, and I want to make sure that they're saved and displayed in a standard format, so other programs and humans can also understand them predictably &amp; consistently.</p>
  <p>For instance, I've seen the following all be valid representations for the same US phone number:</p>
  <ul>
  <li><code>1234567</code></li>
  <li><code>123-4567</code></li>
  <li><code>123 4567</code></li>
  <li><code>5551234567</code></li>
  <li><code>(555) 1234567</code></li>
  <li><code>555-1234567</code></li>
  <li><code>555 123 4567</code></li>
  <li><code>555-123-4567</code></li>
  <li><code>(555)-123-4567</code></li>
  <li><code>(555) 123-4567</code></li>
  <li><code>(5) 123 4567</code></li>
  <li><code>1-555-123-4567</code></li>
  <li><code>(1) 555-123-4567</code></li>
  <li><code>+1 555-123-4567</code></li>
  <li><code>+1 555 123-4567</code></li>
  <li><code>+1 (555) 123-4567</code></li>
  <li>Ad nauseum…</li>
  </ul>
  <p>And then different countries represent numbers in different ways:</p>
  <ul>
  <li><code>55 1234 567 8901</code></li>
  <li><code>55 12 3456 7890</code></li>
  <li><code>55 123 456 7890</code></li>
  <li><code>55 1234 567890</code></li>
  <li><code>555 123 456</code></li>
  <li><code>(55) 123 4567</code></li>
  <li><code>5.555.123-45-67</code></li>
  <li>Ad nauseum…</li>
  </ul>
  <p>As you can see, the number of ways a user can see a valid phone number is nearly infinite (The Wikipedia page for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_the_United_Kingdom" rel="noreferrer">Telephone numbers in the UK</a> is 26 printer pages long). I want all the numbers in my database and on the screen to be in a universally-recognizable format. As far as I can tell, ISO and ANSI have no defined format. <strong>Is there any standard notation for phone numbers?</strong></p>