[bcrl]

Clearly you have never seen a phone line fried by a direct lightning strike before: the cable vaporizes and blows up the ground over top of it. Direct strikes are rare enough that most people will never see them. On overhead lines the neutral and communications strand are grounded and will take most of the strike over the twisted pair communications cable. Underground cables have some benefits by being in non-conductive conduit, but none of that matters if it's a direct strike. All insulators will break down in a strong enough electric field.

There's also the issue of ground bounce. A lightning strike near a house will feed back into the telecommunications and power equipment via the ground rod/plate. I've had experience with plenty of modems getting fried over the years. Some places are just lightning magnets.