July 25 (Reuters) - Verizon (VZ.N) beat quarterly profit estimates on Tuesday on the back of lower costs and a surprise rise in wireless subscribers as efforts to grow its enterprise customer base and super-fast 5G network paid off. They are still down about 5% since the July 9 Wall Street Journal report, which also named AT&T (T.N) among firms that left behind the potentially toxic lead cables. Free cash flow, a metric closely watched by investors to help determine dividend payouts, came in at $5.6 billion, above estimates of $5.05 billion, according to Visible Alpha. Total revenue fell 3.5% to $32.6 billion, missing analysts' estimates of $33.24 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Reporting by Samrhitha Arunasalam in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Devika SyamnathOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Persons: Anthony Skiadas, Hargreaves, Matt Britzman, Verizon's, Samrhitha, Anil D'Silva Organizations: Verizon, Alpha, Consolidated, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru