[lopmotr]

If you had that protection, what would you do if your phone was lost/stolen and you wanted the number transferred to a new SIM card? You lose your number forever if it was impossible to transfer. If there's some way to transfer it, like showing your passport in person in the phone company's office, a hacker can pretend to be you and do that too if your account is valuable enough to be worth the risk. Ultimately, you're still trusting the phone company not to assign your number to somebody else, and that's what they're not good at.

[djakjxnanjak]

I guess I’d like the ability to delegate the responsibility of updating the ownership of my phone number to an entity of my choosing. The phone company would only be able to update with this entity’s go-ahead. Services could specialize in this kind of work so identity verification would be a core competency, and I could pay more for better protection.