Exactly. Pure lazyness on the part of the phone company; in this country the phone company is a 100% pure monopoly (hopefully not for much longer though), so they can get away with anything. The typical installation is 'drop a line from the nearest pole, run it through the nearest ventilation duct (saves the trouble of having to drill a hole through the wall), and terminate it in a little plastic box with 3 surge protectors and a telephone jack.
Finding (or creating) a decent ground point is way too much trouble. Besides, the exchanges are properly protected, all that will break is CPE, which they don't care about.