USAToday has written a report based on an interview with AT&T’s Larry Carter, senior vice president of sales, on how AT&T is preparing for the launch of the iPhone on Friday June 29.

The article writes that AT&T has added 2000 extra sales persons to stores across the country in preparation for the launch.

To get “iReady” for the big day, Carter says AT&T added 2,000 extra sales people to stores. Half will be there just to help handle the expected early crush of buyers. The other half, he says, will stay long-term to help with extra customers the iPhone is expected to draw to AT&T’s stores.

The exec also explains that not everywhere will have the sale stockpile of iPhones;

Carter would not say which stores will have the biggest iPhone stockpiles, but allowed that iPod users are a “natural market” for the smart phone. As such, he says, stores in areas with big numbers of iPod users — such as New York City, Chicago and much of California — will be well stocked

If your local store sells out, Carter says sales people will take mail orders, and devices will be shipped in 3 to 5 days, inventory permitting. “Ultimately, we will meet every customer’s desire to have one,” Carter says.

The article also explains that there will be more surprises due on June 29;

Carter says AT&T also will announce new service plans for it [the iPhone].

In a sub-article on the same page the online publication interviews Balsu Thandu an AT&T technician who has owned an iPhone for over 2 months.

The technicians have logged more than 10,000 hours on the phone, including more than 5,000 hours of voice calls and near 5 gigabytes of data usage. Most phones, he says, get about half that much test time.

For the actual testing, technicians frequented all the places where consumers go: office buildings, subway platforms, stairwells, elevators, crowded bars, sprawling suburban malls and congested city streets. They also showed up incognito at Apple and AT&T stores.

To test iPhone’s durability, Thandu says, they doused it with water, dropped it on concrete and bounced it off sidewalks.

Thandu says he took the iPhone with him on long runs, sweating all over it. “We wanted to test the limits of it.”