It's not in a business' interest to make their product better for consumers, it's in their best interest to keep their costs low and their profits high.

OK, let's dissect this statement. It is also in CONSUMERS interests for businesses to keep their costs low, because low cost of goods is a necessary precursor to lower price, which is one kind of "quality" consumers are looking for. Yes, low COG doesn't guarantee prices come down, but if multiple competitors lower their COG, competition will in all likelihood ensue and prices will fall.

Ditto with high profits. Have you ever noticed that businesses that are barely scraping by with tiny profit margins don't provide very good service? Again, high profits doesn't necessarily mean better quality for consumers, but you ARE more likely to get improved quality when profit margins are high than when they're low.

And how do you get high profits/low costs anyway? Mostly, by getting a lot of customers, economies of scale, innovation, etc. I know you're going to argue "that doesn't happen in the real world," but more often than not, that's exactly what happens.

Why do text message plans still cost an exorbitant amount when the cost to the provider is nil?

Because A) the wireless industry is a little lighter on competition than it might otherwise be -- you might want to ask that agency, I forget its name, that grants monopolies on wireless spectrums. And B) the wireless industry is not going to be a race-to-the-bottom industry, because there's a huge upfront cost to play in that market due to the high cost of investing in all the tower infrastructure, etc. There's no way around that. If a business is going to gamble on the kind of huge investments this industry requires, they're not doing it so they can scrape the sides of the bowl. So you're not going to see the kind of cuttthroat competition you might see in, say, the web hosting industry, which is the epitome of a "race to the bottom" market.

Regarding your comment about cost to provider -- prices are set based on the optimal intersection of supply and demand. If it's well-established that consumer are willing to pay 100x the COG for a service, you may see some competition but you're not going to see a race down to 50x and 10x. At least not unless consumers actually make that their priority focus, which in this industry, they don't. (it's not very common for consumers to switch ISPs because of text messaging rates, for example). Your reaction to this may be "I know, that's why I villify these corporations!" But this is how the world works. If you apply for two jobs, and Emplyer A would extract more value from your work but Employer B offers a higher salary, what do you do? You go with Employer B, because you, naturally, seek the HIGHEST bidder for your work, not the bidder who would profit best off of you. It's no different from the business side. Prices are set based on what people are willing to pay, not what people would like to pay and not what services actually cost. In fact in a competitive market, profits generally get reinvested to better compete and grow the company, so if a company is slick enough to get $0.10/text when it doesn't cost them anything, that "profit" tends to go to subsidize another sector of the business. Think of it as the opposite of a loss leader. So your voice/data plan might cost more if not for those kiddies sending hundreds of text messages at $0.10/txt.

A lot of other innovation in media and content delivery online is going to rely on high bandwidth, don't look at the "disproportionate user" as someone who is selfish, they are just the future consumer, what everyone will trend towards.

So early adopters should get tomorrow's price today? That doesn't make sense. And early adopters -- which we define as not just the people who WANT the service early, but who are willing to pay a premium for that privilege -- these consumers play an important role in helping cover the risky investment businesses make in pursuing the as-of-yet unpopular technologies. Nobody knows what the "future consumer" is, and when companies get that wrong they face huge losses. How many in the industry bet on Blu-Ray as the "obvious" future, the natural evolution of the extremely-successful DVD format? And look at that, it's a disaster because Blu-Ray is getting trounced, and will likely continue to get trounced, by the burgeoning VOD market, and even by regular ol' DVD.

So no, nobody knows the future, and that means risk, and that means high prices. (to make a political segue, this is one of the most serious fallacies of government trying to "push" markets in the right direction -- because government and their Keynesian economists have the arrogance to think they know where the market's going and how centrally-executed actions will interplay with it -- this, despite being wrong almost all the time!)