BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhuanet) -- AT&T Inc., the U.S. only carrier to offer Apple's iPhone, hired 2,000 temporary store workers to staff its company-owned stores for launch of the device, according to media reports Thursday.

AT&T and Apple said they plan to start selling the device starting at 6 p.m. local time on June 29 in cities across the U.S.

To handle the expected crush of customers, AT&T has hired 2,000 employees -- mostly college students -- for the summer, said AT&T spokesman Michael Coe.

On the day of the launch, AT&T's 1,800 company-owned stores will close at 4:30 p.m. to prepare for the 6 p.m. launch in each market.

AT&T sales staff have received a total of 100,000 hours of training to sell the device, at "the high end of the normal range" with an average of 6 hours per employee, said Siegel.

The combination cell phone, media player and wireless Web-surfing device, was first announced in January. It will retail for 499 U.S. dollars and 599 dollars, depending on configuration.

The iPhone system is built on the Leopard, or Mac OS X, operating system so it is natural for the projects to be interdependent at Apple.