It appears that everything is gearing towards that rumoured early October release date for the next generation iPhone, several rumours have hit the net waves claiming the iPhone 5 will see release in October with the 15th and 21st being mentioned, and now apparently over in China customers will be able to pre-order the iPhone 5 as of September’s end.

According to an article over on The Next Web. The 3rd largest mobile operator in China, China Telecom has started training their employees to begin taking pre-orders for the iPhone 5 as of the end of this month.

Furthermore, unnamed sources have stated that Chine Telecom has already announced the availability of the iPhone 5 at one of their stores and says the next generation iOS smartphone official sales will start in October.

Have to say, I’m not too sure just how a China Telecom store can announce the availability of the iPhone 5 when Apple hasn’t announced just when the handset will become available, but there you go that’s China for you.

China Telecom is larger than Verizon Wireless and the largest CDMA carrier on the planet, but even then I don’t think Apple would give them the heads up on the release of the iPhone 5 before giving the same to US carriers, so perhaps this is just guesswork on China Telecom’s part.

Of course anyone can shove the iPhone 5 up for pre-order whenever they like as being available for pre-order doesn’t mean you will get the smartphone in a few weeks and pre-ordering a device could mean you wait months until the handset actually releases.

It is estimated though that China Telecom is expected to shift somewhere in the region of a million iPhone 5 units by the year’s end, so one would presume based on all the speculation that the iPhone 5 will materialise sometime in October.