Priceline agrees to acquire Kayak: The travel research site Priceline announced Thursday that it has agreed to acquire Kayak, a similar firm, for $1.8 billion.

As the Associated Press reported, Priceline will pay about $500 million in cash and $1.3 billion in stock for the company. The deal is awaiting the approval of Kayak’s shareholders and federal regulators.

Kayak recently reported a 78 percent jump in earnings for the third quarter. The company only went public in July, after choosing to delay its public offering due to a weak market.

Data brokers respond to letters: Data broker firms responded to letters from Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asking the companies to disclose more information about their data collection and sharing practices.

Several said that they rely largely on public information, though at least one does look to social networks as a source of information. The Hill reported that lawmakers were not satisfied with many of the answers in the letters and will “push for whatever steps are necessary” to provide greater transparency about how these firms collect data.

Judge to look into Apple v. Samsung foreman’s conduct: Judge Lucy Koh said in an order that she will investigate whether the foreman of the jury in the patent trial between Apple and Samsung improperly concealed information during the jury selection process.

Velvin Hogan, the foreman, was largely credited with explaining the more technical aspects of the case to his fellow jurors relying on his background as a hardware engineer. As CNET reported, Hogan had been involved in a lawsuit with his former employer, Seagate, in the past, but said he was not asked to disclose all of his litigation history when being interviewed for the jury.

Samsung has asked the court to consider overturning the jury’s $1 billion decision in Apple’s favor.

China Telecom to offer iPhone 5: Apple will be increasing its iPhone 5 footprint in one of its most important markets — China. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that China Telecom, the country’s third-largest carrier, will be carrying the iPhone 5 in late November or early December.

China Telecom chairman Wang Xiaochu told the paper that his carrier would have the phone in a Friday interview. Officials at China Unicom, another major carrier, were less sure about when they would be getting the phone. The Journal reported that the carrier did say it hopes to offer the phone this year.

AT&T said Thursday that it will allow all subscribers to access FaceTime on Apple devices, reversing a controversial policy to block the app for certain data plan customers.

The company said that within eight to 10 weeks, the video and voice calling app will be available to subscribers of older unlimited and tiered data plans. In September, AT&T said those customers of the new iPhone 5 or iOS6 wouldn’t have access to FaceTime. The company offered the app only for new Apple device customers who agreed to buy into shared data plans, in which the company bundles together data charges for multiple devices.

AT&T had feared that if too many customers began using FaceTime over its mobile network, it would bog down the system, leading to dropped calls and slow Internet access for all.

“We decided to take this cautious approach for important reasons,” executive vice president Jim Cicconi said in a blog post. “To do otherwise might have risked an adverse impact on the services our customers expect — voice quality in particular — if usage of FaceTime exceeded expectations.”

The move comes after public interest groups filed a formal complaint with federal regulators that AT&T’s practice violated Internet access rules. The Federal Communications Commission prohibits wireless companies from blocking apps that compete with their own voice and video services.

“AT&T cannot block FaceTime based on claims of potential congestion,” said Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, a public interest group that filed the complaint. “AT&T simply can’t justify blocking an app that competes with its voice and texting services unless customers purchase a more expensive monthly plan that includes an unlimited amount of those very same services.”

The company’s wireless practices have come under recent scrutiny by the FCC, which earlier this week slapped the company with a $700,000 fine for switching customers to monthly data plans. The company, the FCC found, had promised those customers would retain their unlimited plans but were forced to pay into monthly data tiers.

Related:

AT&T to invest $14 billion in wireless and wireline

DOJ acting antitrust head to step down: Joseph Wayland, who has been the acting head of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, will be stepping down from his position.

Justice spokeswoman Gina Talamona confirmed that Wayland’s last day in the department will be Nov. 16. His replacement has not been announced.

Wayland was appointed as the acting head of the DOJ’s antitrust division in April, replacing Sharis Pozen. The position has been filled by acting assistant attorney generals since the middle of 2011, when Christine Varney stepped down. William Baer, an attorney with Arnold & Porter, has been nominated to take her place but has yet to confirmed by Congress.

Wayland led the litigation team that challenged the ultimately failed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. Under his leadership, the division also has imposed conditions on a spectrum deal between Verizon and cable companies and considered the issue of the use of standard-essential patents in intellectual property disputes. He also led the litigation team that won a case to block a merger between H&R Block and Tax Act.

AT&T expanding access to FaceTime: AT&T said in a company blog post Thursday that it will expand access to Apple’s FaceTime video conferencing application to all LTE customers, not just those on its Mobile Shared Plans.

AT&T had faced criticism from consumer advocates who believed the carrier’s policies were violating net neutrality principles by limiting access to the app. AT&T had defended its decision, saying that those guidelines were related to allowing consumers to download apps and did not apply to pre-loaded applications.

In the post, AT&T’s Jim Cicconi, the senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, said that the company limited access to assess the impact the app might have had on the company’s networks.

“We will continue to gather and assess the network data on this issue over the next few months and anticipate that we will be able to expand the availability of FaceTime to our customers on other billing plans in the near future,” he said.

Twitter sends out flood of password reset e-mails: Twitter sent out a flood of e-mails to users saying that their accounts may have been compromised, setting off concerns that the service had been hacked. In a statement, the company said that, in routine checks for compromised accounts, it accidentally sent out more messages than it originally intended.

“In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised,” the company said. “We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.”

Samsung, Apple: According to data from Strategy Analytics,the Samsung Galaxy S III was the world’s hottest smartphone in the third quarter. The phone shipped 18 million units to the 16.2 million in shipments from Apple’s iPhone 4S.

Neil Shah, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement that it’s the first time that the Galaxy S III has taken the top spot in the market, with 11 percent share overall

Sprint, U.S. Cellular strike a deal: Sprint and U.S. Cellular announced Wednesday that they have struck a spectrum deal that will boost Sprint’s coverage throughout much of the Midwest.

Sprint, which is based in Overland Park, Kan., paid $480 million for the spectrum, the Associated Press reported. Chicago-based U.S. Cellular said the money should help it focus on its strongest markets.

AT&T commits $14 billion to network buildout: AT&T announced Wednesday that it has committed $14 billion to building out its wireless and wireline networks and plans to cover 300 million people with its LTE network by 2014.

The company also filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to open up a dialogue about the transition from older telecommunications technology and run a beta trial on moving away from that older infrastructure.

In a blog post, AT&T cited the goal of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, saying it hopes “this proceeding will provide some additional stepping stones on the path towards achieving that plan.”

FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said the commission is reviewing the petition.

AT&T, FCC reach agreement on data plans: The Federal Communications Commission announced Tuesday that AT&T has agreed to pay $700,000 to the U.S. Department of Treasury after mistakenly placing some unlimited data plan customers on monthly data plans. The company will also make individual refunds to those “grandfathered” customers who were allowed to keep their unlimited data plans after AT&T dropped that option.

In a statement, AT&T spokesman Michael Balmoris said that the consent decree affects less than 0.03 percent of AT&T customers and that AT&T had already identified many of those affected by the issue.

“Based on a review of our refund process, we believe a vast majority of those customers affected by the billing error have already been made whole,” he told The Washington Post in a statement.

AT&T will be notifying affected customers and offering them refund and plan options.

Effect of elections on tech?: There’s a lot of speculation about what a second Obama term will mean for the technology industry. At VentureBeat, Dean Takahashi muses that there will be continued focus on high-speed Internet access, buildout of 4G networks, investment in health-related technologies and on the nation’s utilities infrastructure.

The election also changed the technology landscape in Congress. The defeat of Reps. Mary Bono Mack (R.-Calif.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.) in particular thins the ranks of House members who advocate for the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. Bono Mack has also championed legislation on data protection and security, priorities that may now have to fall to others.

Obama breaks Facebook, Twitter records: Twitter confirmed that a victory tweet from President Obama — which read “Four more years” and featured a picture of him and Michelle Obama embracing — earned more retweets than any other message from his account.

The same photo of the embracing Obamas grabbed 3.3 million likes, 422,000 shares and nearly 160,000 comments on Facebook. According to a Facebook post on the company’s site for journalists, the photo is the most-liked post of all time.

Twitter also reported that its users sent out 31 million election tweets throughout the day Tuesday. Traffic on the network peaked when news organizations called the election for Obama, sending 327,452 tweets per minute at 11:19 p.m.

AT&T announced Wednesday that it’s investing $14 billion into expanding its LTE network with ambitions to cover 300 million people by the end of 2014.

The company said that spectrum acquisitions and plans to implement more efficient spectrum technology on its cellular network are also part of the plan to improve its mobile Internet network.

“This is a major commitment to invest in 21^st Century communications infrastructure for the United States and bring high-speed Internet connectivity,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive officer in a statement. “We have the opportunity to improve AT&T’s revenue growth and cost structure for years to come, and create substantial value for shareowners.”

AT&T is also making investments on the wireline side, with plans to expand its fiber network, make speed upgrades and offer its U-verse TV, Internet and Voice over IP plans in 8.5 million additional customer locations. It is also expanding its high-speed Internet and VoIP access services, U-Verse IPDSLAM, to 24 million additional customers.

The company projected that the investments will increase earnings per share in the “mid-single-digit or better” range by the end of 2014 and that revenues and margins will grow.

In other AT&T news, the Federal Communications Commission announced Tuesday that AT&T has agreed to pay $700,000 to the U.S. Department of Treasury after mistakenly placing some unlimited data plan customers on monthly data plans. The company will also make individual refunds to those “grandfathered” customers who were allowed to keep their unlimited data plans after AT&T eliminated that option.

In a statement, AT&T spokesman Michael Balmoris said that the consent decree affects less than 0.03 percent of AT&T customers — only those who inadvertently had a monthly data plan added to their account after exchanging their phones for a new smartphone under warranty, under an insurance claim or as part of a relocation.

Balmoris added that AT&T had already identified many of those affected by the issue.

“We had already discovered and corrected the issue by Nov. 2010, and had given refunds to customers who contacted us. Based on a review of our refund process, we believe a vast majority of those customers affected by the billing error have already been made whole,” he said.

AT&T will, however, be notifying affected customers and offering them refund and plan options.