I recently took to completing some of the tasks in the one of the challenges on MapRoulette named Phone or fax number is not in international format (Australia).

The purpose of this entry is to detail my findings in undertaking this challenge relating to the formatting of phone numbers in Australia for OpenStreetMap.

ITU-T E.164 phone number formatting

The formatting as defined in the wiki follows this pattern:

+<country code> <area code> <local number>

This is the ITU-T E.123 and the DIN 5008 pattern and is the assumed preferred pattern given the RFC 3966/NANP pattern is parenthesised and provided secondary on the wiki entry, in addition, the NANP pattern refers to North American use.

Country/area codes for Australia

Using information from the Australian Government website and the Wikipedia page titled Telephone numbers in Australia the following was identified as relating to the above pattern:

The country code for Australia is 61 and applies to both phone numbers and mobile numbers.

The area codes are for sets of states in Australia. These are; New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory as 02, Victoria and Tasmania as 03, Queensland as 07, Western Australia, South Australia and Northern Territory as 08 and applies for phone numbers but not mobile numbers.

The area code for mobile numbers is 04 regardless of state.

The leading 0 in each area code is only retained when calling nationally, whereas when calling internationally (as is the practice for the pattern of phone numbers in OpenStreetMap) the leading 0 is left out.

Examples of Australian formatting

For phone numbers:

+61 x xxxx xxxx

For mobile phones:

+61 4xx xxx xxx

I could not find clarification of how mobile numbers need to be formatted, as I could not find any evidence where the area code for mobile numbers is separated from the local number (e.g. +61 4 xxxx xxxx). This is presumably because the mobile area code applies to the whole country and not for individual states. The wiki also states, “[…] area codes should preferably be separated only in countries where they are still used distinctly for domestic calls”.

For free call numbers:

1800 xxx xxx

18 xx xx

Toll free numbers:

1300 xxx xxx

13 xx xx

Premium rate numbers:

1900 xxx xxx

19 xx xx

These numbers are, in most cases, numbers that are not internationally callable. Therefore they can not be appended by the country code like +61. It appears quite prevalent that businesses in Australia use these numbers.

It is also suggested on the OpenStreetMap wiki that for numbers such as these, that they have their ISO 3166-1 code at the end of the key. In this case this would be phone:AU=. Therefore in the tasks that had these types of numbers, I corrected the formatting to follow the examples above and change the tag from phone= to phone:AU=.

It would have perhaps been more useful if the challenge on MapRoulette had described in some kind of detail what to do in cases where the number is not internationally callable to ensure greater consistency. However this may have been intentional, as the aforementioned tag is not official, as stated on the wiki page.

Please comment or message me if I have misinterpreted or I am otherwise potentially incorrect in regards to any of the matters I discussed above. I appreciate any feedback that might help me become a more valuable contributor.