KmlLayer phone number clickable on mobile phone?

[offroad_bis]

Is there anyway to make a phone number linkable from a description of a Placemark delivered as a KML layer?  It would be nice if mobile phones could click on and dial the phone number.  It looks like the anchor tag is being converted to <a target="_blank">555-555-5555</a> when it starts out as <a href="tel:5555555555">555-555-5555</a>.  A sample of my kml is included below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2">

<Document>

<name>ndfu_coop.kml</name>

<Placemark>

<name>PLAINS COOPERATIVE</name>

<description><![CDATA[151 9TH AVE NW<br>SOME CITY, TX 55555<br><a href='tel:5555555555 rel='nofollow'>555-555-5555</a><br><a href='http://www.plains.coop.junk'>www.plains.coop.junk</a><br>]]></description>

<Point><coordinates>-98.014949681769124,46.923007754171174</coordinates></Point>

</Placemark>

</Document>

</kml>

The description div in the info box on the map formats the above kml as follows.

<div>151 9TH AVE NW<br>SOME CITY, TX 55555<br><a target="_blank">555-555-55552</a><br><a href="http://www.plains.coop.junk" target="_blank">www.plains.coop.junk</a><br></div>

Is it possible to keep the phone link? Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks,

[Rossko]

> Is there anyway to make a phone number linkable from a description of a
> Placemark delivered as a KML layer?  It would be nice if mobile phones could
> click on and dial the phone number.  It looks like the anchor tag is being
> converted to <a target="_blank">555-555-5555</a> when it starts out as <a
> href="tel:5555555555">555-555-5555</a>.

This looks helpful to circumvent KmlLayer's laundering of content
http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-js-api-v3/tree/browse_frm/thread/4b7740da55429f90

[JFrancis]

I was noticing the same issue while developing a mobile version of our outages map. The iPhone and Android devices "helpfully" wrap telephone numbers displayed on a page in code to trigger the dialing function of the phone, but do nothing for telephone numbers that appear in Google Maps Info Windows. A little digging led me to this:

Using mobile-specific HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (Mobile web part 5)
http://davidbcalhoun.com/2010/using-mobile-specific-html-css-javascript

In it, the author describes two additional schemes for hyperlinks, tel and sms. An example would be <a href="tel:18005555555">Call us at 1-800-555-5555</a>

I currently have it working in a simple Info Window (not populated via KML) on both iPhone and Android devices; I suspect the KML could be sufficiently crafted to get it working in its Info Window as well.

JF