Thanks for coming back to this. Internet speeds in the UK are comparable with the US. Many parts of the world are not as fortunate, with bandwidth severely lim

Thanks for coming back to this. Internet speeds in the UK are comparable with the US. Many parts of the world are not as fortunate, with bandwidth severely limited and extortionate data charges (unless it’s Facebook data, then it’s free?!). However, NUM doesn’t exist because the world has a bandwidth problem. You’re right of course that it’s possible to provide machine readable contact data on the web. NUM doesn’t exist because it’s not technically possible to do the same thing with data on the web. NUM exists because after 15 years of the semantic web, this data simply isn’t available for most businesses on the web. Even large businesses - take any example from the homepage of the demo site CompanyDirectory.uk, and see how they’ve implemented semweb standards. How they list their phone numbers for example. It’s an utter mess. Good luck to anyone trying to build a reliable service on top of that data.