Customers of AT&T local telephone service in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware will see a new line item on their bills beginning after March 26, the “local connectivity charge” of $2.75 per month, or $3.50 for New Jersey customers.

The Georgia Public Service Commission has delayed the implementation of the new 762 area code in north Georgia by six months.

Sprint Nextel Corp. and the Communications Workers of America reached agreement on the union’s labor dispute in the upcoming spinoff of its local landline business, to be named Embarq.

T-Mobile has doubled the price of both sending and receiving SMS text messages, from $0.05 per message to $0.10 per message, and subscribers are angry because there is no way to turn off the feature.

Verizon is offering its landline phone subscribers a free 90-day trial of its iobi Home service along with a chance to win up to $100,000 in its iobi Home Sweepstakes.

Sprint Nextel is largely known for its wireless business, but the company also has over 7.4 million local telephone lines across 18 states. As part of the Sprint-Nextel merger, the company will spin off the landline business to a separate company, named Embarq.