iOS 7 contact number spaces are not spaces

In my app I am trying to retrieve the list of contact's number and try to do operations on them. I realized that whenever I have added new contacts (after updating to iOS 7) the new contacts formatting has changed, as there are spacings in the newly added numbers. Using the ordinary replace methods does not remove the spaces. Are these really spaces or what are these ? my objective is to get back the 'space' free number. for example, if the number is 1 818 323 323 323, I want to get 1818323323323