The company is currently seeking around 150 testers from its existing customer base for a two-month pilot that will offer a range of books and the French newspapers Le Monde, Le Parisien, Les Echos, L'Equipe and Télérama, over its 3G network.

A spokesperson for the company told printweek.com that epaper devices, to be sold under the banner Read&Go, are particularly important for the newspaper industries in non-English speaking countries, where newspapers are expensive to distribute and difficult to get hold of.

"The average cost of production and distribution constitutes between 70 and 80% of the total costs for French newspapers," printweek.com was told.

She confirmed that the epaper service is "in competition with paper, not with the Internet".

France Telecom believes it is in a better position to make epaper devices work as it can recoup the cost of providing a device and the network and content tariffs in a single bill, unlike Sony and Amazon.

"Maybe [consumers] will be ready to accept a new device, but not a new bill," said the spokesperson.

The company will look at a range of models, including "advertising supported" offerings, which could make such a service very affordable.

She added that the company expects epaper services to take off more quickly in non-English speaking countries, but confirmed "we will study the UK market very carefully ... but it is too early to say [of any plans]".

The company said it had chosen a "neutral" epaper device for the trials but had not entered into any agreements regarding a specific terminal for the Ready2Go service.

While much has been made of the ebook in recent weeks with a number of announcements by publishers such as HarperCollins and Penguin, analysts believe that epapers will ultimately hold the dominant position when it comes to downloads.

Indeed, Amazon's kindle was marketed with The New York Times on its screens. Epapers enable publishers to update minute-by-minute. However, Orange believes that hourly updates will be the standard for newspapers on epaper devices.