I assume why they store them as entered is because it's hard to convert them between formats. In North America you format the number that way, but other countri

I assume why they store them as entered is because it's hard to convert them between formats. In North America you format the number that way, but other countries do it differently. Maybe the phone number is a local number (without area code) or maybe it has an extension? If you are just storing the phone number to display to a user at a later time, it is a lot simpler just to save it as text field with no validation.