An employee of Verizon has confirmed to TechCrunch that the U.S. operator is planning a “black holiday” of its employees from 21 September to 30 September, something that can only be motivated by one thing, the launch of the iPhone 5. Which directly point to the iPhone 5 release date.

It is expected that the next Apple iPhone 5 is announced on September 12, and its availability will occur within days if those comments are confirmed by employee of Verizon.

The date makes sense, since in fact the iPhone 4S was presented Oct. 4, was available for pre-order on October 7, and became available in stores on October 14.

The availability in the U.S., though, is the earliest, and it is likely that in other countries the new iPhone 5 will come later something else to appear. In the case of iPhone 4S availability occurred a few weeks later, so that data would be repeated in case of iPhone 5 release date in other countries which could be near October 5 .