It's not e-ink, but Nokia also solves this problem to some degree by switching the screen into a low power state, turning off a lot of the pixels and reducing the available colours. This allows you to have a clock, notifications and even a background image visible all the time when the screen is 'off' without draining much battery power.

I can't speak for the US, but certainly here in he UK there are many places where you can't get cable, even in some parts of the biggest cities, because of a lack of modern infrastructure in listed buildings, etc. I do wonder though how many of the quoted 100 million people actually use their POTS lines, or if they just have one because of ADSL or because the cable company forces it on them. I'm in the latter category, I have a POTS line as part of my cable package because its cheaper than just paying for cable on its own. I don't want it, and it's never even been plugged in, but I'm still part of their phone user statistics.

Depending on your species, it could also be one (1), two (2), three (3), many (4) and lots (16).