“The market is tipping increasingly towards a zero-sum share gain,” Moffett wrote in a research note today. Sprint (NYSE:S), T-Mobile (NYSE:DT), MetroPCS (NYSE:PCS) and Leap Wireless (NASDAQ:LEAP) are all losing subscribers in their mature markets, while AT&T and VZW — although hurting in many key metrics — continued to add subscribers throughout Q3.

“The U.S. wireless industry grew service revenues at a 4.2% growth rate over the 12 months through September 30th, the first reacceleration in a year,” Moffett wrote. “Total subscriber growth dipped to 5.3% on a trailing 12-month basis, and ARPU growth — despite all that growth in wireless data — is still a negative — 1.0% for the industry. Nevertheless, the aggregate result was something of an improvement.”

The improvement was clearly driven by AT&T and VZW more so than their smaller competitors. Even so, the postpaid business of both carriers lost share to prepaid in the quarter. In total, postpaid additions declined 47% to 1.4 million year-over-year, while prepaid gains were up 60.8% from Q3 to 1.4 million. The industry is aligning itself into two camps – pre or postpaid — but even within the prepaid market, growth is bifurcating between the very low pay-as-you-go plans and the higher-end all-you-can-eat plans, Moffett noted. He estimated that unlimited prepaid subs comprise 5.2% of the total industry and 24% of the prepaid and reseller segment, which grew at 51.3% compared to the 7.3% growth of the traditional pay-as-you-go sub-segment.

“The stark divergence between the haves and have-nots is clearest in financial reports,” Moffett wrote. “While margins have gradually expanded at Verizon and have recovered from a short-term iPhone trough at AT&T, they have dropped precipitously at Sprint. At T-Mobile, margins have been stable, but remain much, much lower than at Verizon or AT&T.”

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How many apps do you use on your desktop? How many Web apps do you regularly use in your browser? How many Web sites do you visit on a regular basis?

In any of these areas, would your life be vastly improved if instead of the handful of useful things you use every day, you suddenly stopped to consider 100,000 additional options?

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In a deal announced today, Cisco said it will buy the set-top box business of China’s DVN for a total of about $44.5 million to expand its cable TV/video reach in that growing market.

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Today, EXFO, which specializes on test and assurance equipment — and is amping up its focus on IP-related opportunities — announced a new end-to-end assesment solution for mobile backhaul networks with a focus on testing Ethernet traffic.

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It took years and many false-starts for that to be the case, but when mobile operators and their vendors worked out how to interconnect and interoperate formally siloed SMS islands, the telephone industry’s most successful modern app was born.

Mobile operators can either figure out how to replicate this success — or they can kiss their ability to delivery mobile services, and the affiliated revenue, goodbye. And that’s where RCS comes in.

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