AT&T has reduced the cost of its cheapest unlimited plan from $70 per month to $65 per month month for one line of service. The operator has also expanded the number of unlimited pricing options it's offering from two to three.

The moves could well help the operator keep pace with Verizon, which instituted similar changes to its own unlimited pricing in August. Indeed, several Wall Street analysts pointed to Verizon's pricing changes as helping to drive part of the 601,000 net customer additions the operator reported for Q3 2019. "Verizon's $5 price reduction in August translated into a sizable net add beat," research analysts at Nomura's Instinet explained in a recent note to investors.

Now, AT&T appears set to mostly match Verizon's pricing, albeit with plans roughly $5 below Verizon's, as the company introduced three new unlimited plans:

Those plans will replace AT&T's two existing pricing options:

AT&T representative said that the operator "will share share more information on 5G for consumers later this year." That's noteworthy considering AT&T still is not selling its 5G+-branded service working in its millimeter-wave spectrum to regular customers; instead, that offering is reserved only for "select" business customers. The operator has said it plans to launch 5G in lowband spectrum by the middle of next year, presumably to regular consumers.

As analysts at Wall Street research firm Wells Fargo wrote in a note to investors, AT&T in the third quarter reported revenues from its wireless business slightly above expectations, alongside 255,000 total phone net customer additions. The analysts said that figure includes 101,000 postpaid customers and 154,000 prepaid customers (roughly comparable to the firm's expectations of 60,000 postpaid customers and 200,000 prepaid customers).

— Mike Dano, Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies, Light Reading | @mikeddano