Telecom firm Verizon Wireless announced Tuesday the HTC Desire 612, its next smartphone, will be available on the network later this week.

The entry-level smartphone is a variant of the Desire 610, which is already being sold by mobile service provider rival AT&T. It's similar to an HTC take on Motorola's Moto G LTE.

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The HTC Desire 612 sports a 4.7-inch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset, an Adreno 305 graphics processing unit and a 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 quad-core processor running Android 4.4 KitKat.

It has a 2,040 milliampere hour battery, a gigabyte worth of random access memory, 8 GB of built-in memory, a microSD card slot capable for expandable memory, an 8 MP rear camera with an LED flash, an 1.3 megapixel front facing camera and dual front-facing speakers.

As a unique feature, Verizon has given the Desire 612 support for the company's XLTE network, which equates to faster data transfer speeds for users.

Although housed in a plastic shell, the handset does have some of the features from the flagship HTC One M8, including BlinkFeed, a customized news feed offered on the home screen and BoomSound speakers.

HTC Desire 612 will be available with Verizon for a two-year contract on Oct. 9. Though Verizon equipment installment plans are available, the prices are not yet clear as of now.

While Verizon is attempting to attract would-be subscribers, another telecom rival is upping the ante with its new shared data plan for businesses.

Sprint announced Tuesday its new Business Share Plans will give businesses with up to 50 lines a shared data plan offering as much as 200 gigabytes of data. This eliminates the need to purchase individual data plans for each device.

The plan starts at US$90 for 20 gigabytes of data on up to 10 devices. Larger companies, on the other hand, may avail of a US$675 plan for 200 GB of shared data over 50 lines.

Tagsverizon, Verizon wireless, HTC Desire 612, Android 4.4, Android Kitkat