AT&T cuts prices for wireless data plan customers

NEW YORK (Frankfurt: HX6.F - news) , Feb 1 (Reuters) - AT&T Inc (NYSE: T - news) , the No. 2 U.S. mobile provider, on Saturday (Shenzhen: 002291.SZ - news) announced a price cut for customers who share large data plans in its latest attempt to regain ground lost to market leader Verizon Wireless and No. 4 U.S. operator T-Mobile US.

In what the company called its "best-ever prices," AT&T said a family of four can get unlimited talk and text with 10GB of shared data for $160 a month. The discounts are available to any customer, including small businesses with up to 10 lines, and customers of other carriers who switch to AT&T.

The cuts follow recent price adjustments at all four U.S. wireless providers as they attempt to sustain growth in a mature market built on stealing growth from competitors.

AT&T and T-Mobile U.S. have been competing fiercely. After T-Mobile spent several quarters directly marketing to AT&T (Berlin: SOBA.BE - news) customers, AT&T recently offered to pay T-Mobile customers to switch to its service.

As part of its new effort, AT&T, for a limited time, is offering new and existing customers a $100 credit for each new line of service. While it does not have an ad Sunday's Super Bowl broadcast, the company plans to run existing advertising the same day in hopes of generating interest in its plans.

For the fourth quarter, AT&T reported 566,000 net additional subscribers, missing Wall Street expectations and trailing market leader Verizon Wireless, which had 1.6 million additional subscribers, and T-Mobile U.S., which had 869,000.