>Rajesh
>
>Just a little note of caution when formatting phone no. fields. Due to the proliferation of mobile (cell) phones, and the almost exponetial growth in subscribers of land-lines, we've found in the UK that we ran out of space with set formats.
>
>e.g.
>
>Most UK numbers were like 0XXX XXXXXX. In the 90's these were all changed to 01XXX XXXXXX
>
>Many big cities had the format: (city - local exchange - number) 0X1 XXX XXXX, and London had the format:
>01 XXX XXXX.
>Most cities were changed to 01X1 XXX XXXX. London had to be split into: 0181 XXX XXXX and 0171 XXX XXXX (for inner and outer London). Later these were changed (respectively) to: 020 8XXX XXXX and 020 7XXX XXXX.
>
>So "hard-coding" phone no. formats may lead to a legacy problem when your exchanges become full.
>
>Terry
>

Hi Terry

You have a valid point here! What is solution to this in your opinion. Should we store formatting characters as a part of phone no. in the database or something else ?

Rajesh