Boy, am I excited! At long last there’s an iPhone in my future now that the Apple smartphone is coming to Verizon Wireless. I’ll be pre-ordering one as soon as I come up with the moolah (anyone want to buy a Nintendo Wii with several games?).

Being an Apple fan and journalist, I’ve wanted an iPhone since they debuted. But the AT&T service is so bad in my neck of the woods, it made purchasing one impractical. The Verizon network works just fine, thank you, so now I can take the plunge.

So, I’m guessing, will lots of other folks. There are approximately 93 million Verizon customers and I expect them to buy the iPhone in droves.

I’m also excited about the hotspot feature of the Verizon iPhone that will let you open up your laptop, connect to your phone via Wi-FI and share its connection.

If you’re a current Verizon customer like me, plan to buy an iPhone and want to transfer contacts, you’ll need to download and run Backup Assistant on your existing phone before receiving your new iPhone. If you already keep your contacts on your Mac or PC, you can use iTunes to sync them to your new iPhone 4.

iTunes syncs contacts with applications such as Mac OS X Address Book, Yahoo! Address Book, and Google Contacts on a Mac, or with Yahoo! Address Book, Google Contacts, Windows Address Book (Outlook Express), Windows Contacts (Vista and Windows 7), or Microsoft Outlook 2003, 2007, or 2010 on a PC.

The iPhone 4 can also sync your contacts over the air using MobileMe or Microsoft Exchange. However, all existing voice mails will be lost when transferring over to iPhone. By the way, the Verizon iPhone will have the 3G Mobile Hotspot app pre-installed, and it will also have other popular apps available in the market such as VZ Navigator, and V CAST Media Manager.

Of course, there are a couple of questions that haven’t been answered. Will Verizon users be able to upgrade to an iPhone 5 when it’s released? (I’m guessing yes.) How long do you think before the iPhone comes to Sprint and T-Mobile? (I’m saying 12-18 months.)

Finally, as a Comcast customer tired of a high (and growing every couple of months) “triple play” package, I may dump my LAN line when I get an iPhone 4, go with Dish Network for TV (I’m intrigued by their Apple products friendly-TV Everywhere option) and stick with Comcast simply for Internet.

— Dennis Sellers