File it under faulty assumptions organizations make about their clients or customers. If you live in a rural area in the United States it is still quite possible to have:

  * No cellular service
  * No landline service
  * No postal delivery to your property, and a physical address that isn't in any database
  * No public utilities

It can be very frustrating to deal with services that assume you have the ability to receive SMS messages, and almost anything requiring identity these days demands a phone number.