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There has literally been hundreds of cases reported in the media in the last few years where the phone company ported a phone number either without verification or with "verification" (easily found information) and the victim had their accounts stolen. This has been a documented problem.

Phone companies seem to be starting to take the issue more seriously as of the last few months due to the aforementioned bad press. Verizon just forced me to create a PIN by Jan 24th, 2017. So I didn't have a PIN until less than a month ago.

The practice has been in place so long, even a lumbering giant like Verizon requires it... Hahaha

Almost all US prepaid providers use the last 4 digits of the phone number or the billing zip code as the PIN.

Many landline and voip providers really do just require a signature.

Landline & VOIP providers rarely have a PIN or security question on file, and CLECs like Level 3 (who supplies Twilio and many others) will approve nearly any port since their customers don't keep customer service records for each number on file with them.

I moved off verizon to google fi last summer, there was no PIN, just asked for my phone number and name.