Buffalo, NY (WBEN) It's been a busy time for Verizon employees taking pre-orders for the iPhone5, and store employees should see a lot of new faces hitting the stores come Friday.

"We've seen significant volumes of pre-orders since we took them at 3am (Friday) morning," says Verizon Wireless spokesman John O'Malley. "Our online ordering system is performing very well."

O'Malley says demand should be heavy in person too. "There's a lot of pent-up demand for this. We expect to see a lot of people coming into our stores on the 21st. This is clearly an iconic device, something people really look forward too," adds O'Malley.

But will it bring in new customers to Verizon's wireless plans? "That's hard to say," explains O'Malley. "I think the fact it's going to a 4G LTE device, and we have the largest 4G LTE network in the Buffalo area, and that should help us."