# Phone (USPhoneNumberGenerator)

The [Phone](/app/generation/generators/generator-reference/phone.md) generator generates a random telephone number that matches the country or region of the input telephone number and maintains the format.

## Link object structure <a href="#generator-api-phone-link-object" id="generator-api-phone-link-object"></a>

The Phone generator does not support linking. It can be made self-consistent, but not consistent with another column. You cannot configure differential privacy.

The `metadata` object is populated from the [`PhoneNumberMetadata`](https://app.tonic.ai/apidocs/index.html#/models/PhoneNumberMetadata) object, which includes a setting to indicate whether to replace invalid telephone numbers with valid telephone numbers.

```json
{
  "schema": "string",
  "table": "string",
  "column": "string",
  "path": "string",  //JSON fields only
  "dataType": "string",  //MongoDB, Amazon DynamoDB, and JSON fields only
  "metadata": {
    "presetId": "string",
    "generatorId": "USPhoneNumberGenerator",
    "replaceInvalidNumbers": boolean,
    "isConsistent": boolean,
    "encryptionProcessor": "x-on", //To use configured Structural data encryption
    "customValueProcessor": "string"  //If custom value processor applied
  }
}
```

## Example replacement <a href="#generator-api-phone-replacement" id="generator-api-phone-replacement"></a>

In the following replacement for the Phone generator, invalid telephone numbers are replaced.

Consistency is disabled.

```json
{
  "name": "cell_phone",
  "schema": "public",
  "table": "users",
  "links": [
    {
      "schema": "public",
      "table": "users",
      "column": "cell-phone",
      "metadata": {
        "presetId": "USPhoneNumberGenerator",
        "generatorId": "USPhoneNumberGenerator",
        "replaceInvalidNumbers": true,
        "isConsistent": false
      }
    }
  ]
}
```


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