AT&T Employee Points at Sept.-end for the Release of iPhone 5

AT&T employees have been reportedly asked to work during the last two weeks of September, suggesting the next generation iPhone will release in the same period.

A tipster, an employee of AT&T, also told Gizmodo on Friday that Apple's launch of the next iPhone is expected to occur at the end of September.

"I'm an att employee and my boss just announced that vacation requests for the end of September will be denied due to an "event blackout." Historically the only time they've done this was for an iPhone release. So we're looking at the last two weeks of September," the tipster wrote in an email.

Another report said AT&T has begun communicating with its employees to finish their training and be ready for the launch as the company's retail stores are expected to see a great deal of foot traffic in September.

Bloomberg had also reported in June that the iPhone 5 is expected to be launched in September, though it did not specify when in the month the device would arrive.

Apple’s next smartphone is expected to receive the A5 processor that made its debut in the iPad 2, a dual-mode baseband chip from Qualcomm that would support both GSM and CDMA networks, and an eight megapixel camera.