Motivation
Phone numbers keep being added to OSM which are not in the agreed format, which includes a country code and excludes most punctuation. This makes it difficult to find actual issues with phone numbers, such as where a number has been transcribed incorrectly in a way that makes it invalid.
I have created the Phone Report website which suggests fixes to phone numbers and identifies invalid phone numbers. This has been in use over recent weeks to fix many phone numbers. Some of those changes are very simple and similar to each other and could be made automatically.
Making automatic changes in simple cases saves mappers’ time and allows them to spend time on identifying and fixing actually invalid phone numbers.
Proposal
I propose to run an ongoing automated edit on objects with phone, contactːphone, mobile, contactːmobile, phoneːmobile, fax , contactːfax or contactːwhatsapp in Canada to reformat phone numbers which have extra punctuation or are missing the country code to the format +1-555-555-5555
This automated edit has already been discussed and accepted in the US community and is running there.
Edits
Edits will only be made if all of the following applyː
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The value in the phone tag consists of only digits, spaces, parentheses, dashes, hyphens, periods or invisible formatting marks such as non-breaking spaces, zero-width spaces
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The value can be parsed using libphonenumber-js assuming a
+1country code -
The new number is a valid phone number
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The new number is a Canadian number with
+1country code -
The new number is different by more than just the addition or removal of spacing characters (spaces and hyphens), for example a country code was added or punctuation was removed
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The OSM element does not contain any duplicate phone numbers
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The new phone number is not classified as a non-mobile phone number in a mobile tag (e.g. a toll free number tagged in
mobile) -
And only if all of the above applies to every phone tag on the object
This is a subset of the suggested fixes on Phone Report, in particular it excludes any tag with multiple numbers, the duplicate and non-mobile number checks, any numbers with extensions or any with letters.
The target formatting of the numbers would be +1-555-555-5555 after discussion with members of the US community.
Number of Objects Affected
Many edits have been made manually (about 5000), I think mostly by @Stuart_L, so there are not many objects affected right now, but this will save manual effort going forward. As of 2025-12-07, in Canada, there wereː
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73 OSM objects with invalid phone numbers
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Of these, 11 have automatic fixes suggested on the website
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Of these, 9 would be affected by by this edit
Once the first edit has been done, it would be only objects that had been edited in the past day that would be affected, likely fewer than 10 per day.
Grouping of Edits
Edits would be grouped by province, with up to one changeset per province per day.
Examples of edits that would and would not be made
Edits that would be made automatically by the bot
w307248561: phone=+1 (613) 564-1062 to phone=+1-613-564-1062
n12128712526: phone=(450) 332-3931 to phone=+1-450-332-3931
Edits that are suggested by the website but not made automatically
n13358601199 has multiple phone numbers. To be safe, objects with multiple phone numbers in one tag are not included in this proposal.
-
phoneː
+1 (613) 828-7887; +1 (800) 818-5469 -
suggested fixː
+1-613-828-7887; +1-800-818-5469
Objects not detected as issues
w481786832: phone=+1 613-680-8600
This is not in the target format, but is still valid.
Full List of Edits
See here for the full list of edits that would be made by this proposal, as of 2025-12-07.
Timescale
I will wait at least 10 days, until 2025-12-17, for any comments before commencing this edit. The proposal will also be shared to be posted in weekly OSM.
Wiki Page
Reading this but not from Canada?
I am happy to extend this edit to other regions. Let me know if you think this would be accepted in your country and a further proposal could be made. Meanwhile, check the phone report website and look at the suggested fixes. Make some edits and report any errors with the tool.