July 24 (Reuters) - AT&T ( T ) exceeded market

expectations for wireless subscriber additions in the second

quarter on Wednesday, as the telecom operator's higher-tier

unlimited plans attracted customers.

The company added 419,000 monthly bill-paying wireless phone

subscribers, compared with expectations of 284,800 additions,

according to five analysts polled by FactSet.

AT&T's ( T ) unlimited plans that are usually priced lower than

those of rivals have helped the company add budget-conscious

customers amid tough competition from T-Mobile and

Verizon.

That has also helped AT&T ( T ) retain customers better than

rivals, with its postpaid phone churn- the number of people

disconnecting from a company's service - coming at 0.70%, the

second lowest reported for a second quarter.

Free cash flow, a metric that helps determine dividend

payouts, rose more than 9% to $4.6 billion, beating LSEG

estimates of $4.22 billion.

However, slower phone upgrades in the U.S. weighed on AT&T's ( T )

revenue, mirroring comments from Verizon.

Mobility equipment revenue was down 8% in April-June period.

Total revenue of $29.8 billion missed estimates of $29.92

billion, according to LSEG data.

AT&T ( T ), one of the largest telecom operators in U.S., was

troubled by data breaches and hours long outages this year.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said in a report

on Monday the nationwide outage in February that lasted over 12

hours blocked more than 92 million voice calls and prevented

more than 25,000 attempts to reach 911.

This could potentially result in a fine for the company.

(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by

Arun Koyyur)