The need for a universal syntax on the Internet has led to the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which was designed to be extensible, complete, and printable. This concept could apply to the telephone numbers, too, since both plus and minus (hyphen) signs are legal characters in the URL. Here is my proposed format for the universal telephone number notation, enclosed in "less than" and "greater than" signs.
<telephone:+1-819-595-9210>
Despite the thrust to go global rather than being a U.S. organisation, IEEE along with most of the advertisers continue to use North American centric telephone number notation, without the country code. In the universal telephone number notation above, the "+" indicates that the number must follow the external access code (011 in my case for overseas call). I also want the Telcos to adopt a method so that my directory database on a laptop computer would be usable anywhere in the world without hard-coded data. Even if the telephone number including the country and the area code is entered, the software on the telephone switch should accept it and calculate the rates accordingly.
By the way, the URL of my home page on the world-wide web encapsulates my E-mail address to act as a universal electronic address.
