Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has launched a new political group to campaign for reforms in the US to drive the technology industry.

The Fwd.us group (‘forward us’) is calling primarily for immigration reform to allow US companies to hire the best technical staff, along with more focus on scientific research and better science, technology and maths education in schools.

Neostratus partner Netia is the first operator in Europe to launch Microsoft Lync 2013 integrated with core vioce and data services.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Accenture have announced a five-year research collaboration to develop advanced analytics solutions. The alliance's research aims to close the gap between the advance of analytics technologies and their successful application in specific industry and government environments. 

US operators Verizon Wireless and US Cellular are investigating the potential of a no-contract model, following T-Mobile USA’s recent move to drop contracts and phone subsidies completely.
Verizon Communications CEO Lowell McAdam said Verizon Wireless could shift to a no-contract model relatively easily and would do so if customers demanded it.

Tier-two operator US Cellular has gone further by offering short-term deals to potential customers with the option to try out its network without committing to a service agreement.

Recognizing the rapid growth opportunities for transformational technology solutions in the Unified Communication & Collaboration technology space and with the continued convergence of Pro A/V, IT and Social Networking, Arrive Systems, Inc. (www.arrivesys.com) has appointed Lee Dodson to lead the company as President & Chief Operations Officer for North and South America and Canada.

Samena Telecommunications Council, a tri-regional non-profit telecom association has announced that Google is the latest organisation to join as a new member.

Continued growth in T-Mobile USA’s prepaid subscriber base helped the operator achieve a net addition of 3,000 ‘branded’ subscribers during the three months ended 31 March.

It’s an impressive turnaround given that T-Mobile – the smallest of the four nationwide carriers in the US – registered a 349,000 overall net loss to its branded customer base (which excludes M2M and MVNO customers) during the previous quarter.

Facebook Inc is set to unveil its own Android smartphone on Thursday at a press event to be held at its Menlo Park headquarters, according to a blog published on The New York Times’ website.

BlackBerry’s financial results on Thursday should provide the first concrete data on how well the new flagship BlackBerry device, the Z10, is performing. Jan Dawson, chief telecom analyst at Ovum, details what he is expecting:

A flaw in the widely used BIND DNS (Domain Name System) software can be exploited by remote attackers to crash DNS servers and affect the operation of other programs running on the same machines.