A telephone number associated with a POI. See also
contact:phone
=*
for an alternative (less frequent) way of tagging phone numbers.
Usage
If your country does not use area codes, that part should be left out. Verify that you are not violating data privacy laws in your country (especially for private phone numbers) before adding a phone number.
fax
number
may be used in the same way as
phone
=*
Spacing and separators
Some countries have very well-established national standards on how telephone numbers are written (e.g. xxx-xxx-xxxx in the US) which leads to mappers in those countries preferring that format over the aforementioned standards (but even in this case, the "+1-xxx-xxx-xxxx" format for the NANP standard should be explicit, to indicate that this phone number is callable internationally: OSM user agents should
not
have to guess how to perform a call according to geographic locations, or according to the value of the first 3-digit group).
Note that for phone numbers that are in international E.164 format, space (or even hyphen) separators are not significant, but the convention is to use a separator
at least
between the ITU-T country code and the rest of the phone number. The other groupings are optional: area codes should preferably be separated only in countries where they are still used distinctly for domestic calls; in other countries, the groupings are just kept by convenience and according to local usages in phone books or as shown in amenities (these groupings may vary for mnemonic reasons only, there's no requirement to suppress these group separators even if they are ignored when dialing).
This is true also when the phone number has additional digits for target selection (e.g. in Germany where there's a common public part, with variable size, followed by an internal short number which may be locally dialed directly without using any trunk selection code before composing the national number). For the purpose of OSM, we should assume calls are being performed from a public network and not from a private internal network, and the full number should work even when dialing this full number with the trunk selection code from a local network where the short number should also work.
The same remark about separators applies to phone numbers that are
not
in E.164 format (because they are not usable internationally and can be dialed only domestically, either nationwide, or only from a more specific network).
Only use object-specific emergency numbers
Some mappers started to add emergency numbers to police stations, hospitals, and fire stations (see also
emergency:phone
=*
). This is fine as long as local numbers are used and the number is really bound to the object. You should not map objects with universal emergency numbers (e.g. 911 / 110 / 112) for local objects since this could result in non-emergency calls blocking real emergency calls when people try to reach a local police station, hospital, or fire station with non-emergency matters.
Extensions
Some telephone numbers have extensions, there are a few different formats for mapping these
Informal North American system:
+1-905-688-5550x3369
or
+1-905-688-5550 x3369
E.123 format:
+1-978-750-1900 ext. 4309
DIN 5008 format:
+49 123 4567-1234
The DIN 5008 format is preferred by the German
and Austrian
communities but has limited use in other regions, since it is incompatible with E.123.
Phonewords
In some countries, businesses commonly use
phonewords
in posted phone numbers.
phone
=*
should contain the numeric, fully resolved phone number for machine readability. Phonewords seen on signage etc. can go in
phone:mnemonic
=*
, which could help search engines display the phone number more memorably.
Free to Call Numbers (Toll Free Numbers)
Most freephone numbers are not dialable internationally and so some users map these in the national format (e.g.,
800 555 1234
), without the country code. Other people prefer to use the full international format, including the country code (e.g.,
+1 800 555 1234
), to make them consistent with other phone values and since the international format is still valid and dialable nationally. Some toll free numbers are placed in a nationally suffixed key, see
Key:phone#Support for multiple countries
How to map
Add the
phone
number
tag to any map object that has a phone, following the format described above.
In case of multiple phone numbers, use
phone=number;number
as described in
§ Parsing phone numbers
and
Semi-colon value separator
More specialized tags:
For mobile numbers these can be mapped in a separate tag
mobile
is the most common tag for this, although
contactːmobile
and
phone:mobile
have also been used.
emergency:phone
=*
to associate a telephone number to be called in case of emergencies
Examples
The illustration shown in the top-right is a shop in the UK (code 44), in
London
(area 20), so could be tagged with
phone
+44 20 8452 7891
Regional variations
Italy
Italy does not omit the 0 in the international format like many countries do so, for example, the Milan number 02.724261 becomes
phone
+39 02 724261
in OSM. A few other countries are doing the same and require dialing the national trunk selection code when calling them from abroad. (Note: the "0" default trunk prefix may be replaced by a "trunk selection code" in calls from within the country, but only for phone numbers that have this selection feature enabled: not all national phone numbers have a trunk selection code, and some ranges of "short" numbers, not starting with the default "0" trunk code, may also be called internationally; so this default "0" trunk code must still be used when calling from abroad).
United States
The preferred format for phone numbers in the US is
+1-NXX-NXX-NXXX
, based on a
2023 discussion
and
2025 straw poll
. For example,
phone
+1-323-456-7890
. This format allows for internationalization while keeping the area code and local number separate for US users who seldom encounter international dialing prefixes. Phone numbers in the United States and Canada consist of the following four elements: "+" (plus sign), the international country code (always 1), the area code, and the local telephone number. Phone numbers should not have parentheses around any of these number elements, including the area code, as is common in many local representations of phone numbers.
Public telephones
Even phone boxes have telephone numbers. Don't be confused. Telephone boxes must
always
be tagged with
amenity
telephone
to describe what the object is. You can optionally add the
phone
=*
tag to supply the extra detail of its telephone number. But please take care: In Germany, public telephones
do not
have phone numbers anymore, because the service that they were callable has been discontinued.
Parsing phone numbers
Clearly, it will be dangerous to assume that mappers have followed the above format correctly. Code using this tag might defensively reject or attempt to correct possible formatting errors. Specific things to note:
When dialling, the
'-'
-signs have to be omitted (mobile phones accept this character in their contact list, but ignore it when performing calls). The same is true for separating spaces or dots.
If the
'+'
-sign is not supported by the device, it has to be replaced by
the local international call prefix
; e.g.,
00
in most countries, or
011
in US. The dialing device may have to be configured accordingly (this is normally not needed for mobile phone devices that automatically recognize the rules used by the local mobile operator and preconfigured in its SIM card or in the phone firmware).
The character
can be used to separate multiple phone numbers.
Support for multiple countries
Some amenities provide a different phone number for different countries (mostly seen when the amenity is on a country boundary, or is an international company).
One of the possible ways to solve this is by adding the
ISO 3166-1 code
at the end of the key.
For example
(all phone numbers below are invented only for documenting this page)
phone
+32 57 53 62 45
for the country where the amenity is,
phone:BE
+32 57 53 62 45
and
phone:FR
+33 6 12654478
for different national phone numbers. Note that when using country codes, the convention is to make it uppercase, so it is not confused with a language code (but some mappers use lowercase instead).
Also some amenities have a local phone number which can only be used domestically not cannot be called internationally (notably for toll free phone numbers, or abbreviated phone numbers). For international calls, they publish another phone number. For example:
phone:FR
0 800 123 456
for standard toll free call only from France where the amenity is (note that there's NO "+" sign, it is NOT in international format),
phone
+33 1 23 45 67 89
when calling from any other country (note that it is not always possible to use it for domestic calls, or the toll free rate will not apply: users have to use the national number instead, they will most often be instructed by an automated vocal system: the most selective applicable key should be used; this means that OSM user agents should present the list of possible phone numbers, with their restrictions encoded in the subkey, to allow users to select which phone number to call, even if these agents preselect an applicable one).
Some phone numbers can also be called toll free (or with reduced rates) only when calling from a specific operator (such as customer services of that operator). When calling from another network, another national phone number or a standard geographic phone number must be used. For example, this could be tagged like this:
phone:FR:mobile:SFR
3000
for standard toll free call only from the SFR mobile network (operator in France), sometimes even when calling from abroad with roaming access (provided you use the same SIM card of that operator); note that there's also no "+" sign for this short number (this phone number is not valid internationally).
(adjust the "FR:mobile:SFR" subkey of the tag according to the conventions used in that country)
phone:FR
0 810 123 456
for calls with flat rates from other networks only in France (still no "+" sign).
phone
+33 1 23 45 67 89
when calling from any other country or network (international toll rates apply according to the pricing plan of the originating operator).
Applications / Web services that display or dial the number from OSM
Offmaps
(iPhone): Displays and dials the phone number in the app's downloadable City Guides.
OsmAnd
: Displays and dials the phone number of all types of indexed POI.
Organic Maps
: Displays and dials the phone number of all types of indexed POI.
Galileo Offline Maps
: Displays and dials the phone number of all types of indexed POI.
Alternative tags
contact:phone
=*
has the same meaning for vast majority of tags, though some mappers used them with subtle distinctions.
Idea of deprecating either tags without contact: prefix or ones with contact prefix is repeatedly suggested, often triggering huge discussion and ending with conclusion that there is no consensus. Please, read past discussion before starting a new one
Discussions/tagging/contact:phone or phone
is a failed proposal to deprecate
contact:phone
=*
Proposed features/Social media contact prefix
is a similar attempt for
=*
=*
etc. deprecation in favor of contact: prefixed versions.
Possible tagging mistakes
phone=yes
‒ Perhaps
telephone
yes
is meant to denote that a facility has a public telephone available.
See also
Notes and references
External links