France Telecom's Orange has announced its trial of 150 ePaper devices, Read&Go, in France this year for a two-month pilot period. It will have 1 GB of storage, will be WiFi- and 3G-enabled, and will offer a range of books and the French newspapers Le Monde, Le Parisien, Les Echos, L'Equipe and Télérama. Content will be updated every hour between 6am and midnight.

A spokeswoman from Orange said the ePaper service is "in competition with paper, not with the Internet." She explained that Orange can succeed because they are able to put the costs of providing a device and network and content charges onto a single bill unlike Sony and Amazon.

A model has not been chosen yet, but Orange is looking into "advertising supported" offerings, using geolocation to embed ads.

The spokeswoman also said that ePaper devices "are particularly important for the newspaper industries in non-English speaking countries, where newspapers are expensive to distribute and difficult to get hold of." She added that "the company expects ePaper services to take off more quickly in non-English speaking countries [but] we will study the UK market very carefully ... but it is too early to say."

Les Echos, a French paper, had launched an e-paper in 2007, and Korean companies have made steps in developing ePaper devices. Analysts "believe that ePapers will ultimately hold the dominant position when it comes to downloads," according to Printweek.com.

Watch a Youtube video on how Read&Go will work here (in French).

Source: Printweek.com through IFRA Executive News Service, PaidContent.org