Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Linda Jo Heilman)

AT&T is feeling the heat of competition and as a result has lowered the price of its unlimited data plan from $ 100 to $ 90 a month, also improving it by adding 10GB of high-speed tethering data. AT&T today also announced a $ 60-per-month option for customers who are willing to accept slower speeds of no more than 3Mbps.

Until recently, AT&T only sold its $ 100-per-month unlimited smartphone data plan to customers who also subscribed to DirecTV or U-verse TV. After unlimited data announcements from Verizon and T-Mobile USA, AT&T made its unlimited plan available to any customer but initially did not change any of its annoying limitations. Unlimited data users thus couldn’t use their phones as mobile hotspots to get Internet access for other devices.

Today’s announcement cut the monthly price from $ 100 to $ 90 and renamed the plan “Unlimited Data Plus.” Customers will get 10GB of high-speed tethering each month. After the 10GB is used, tethering speeds are reduced to 128kbps. There were no changes to this plan on the HD video front: the best video quality is still disabled by default, but customers can watch video in HD by disabling the “Stream Saver” option, AT&T told Ars.