sandy. this morning the big dig begins. down on the ground we have a lot of ice. this bottom layer that will be very tricky for you this morning. plus we seriously need to look that. the new goliath, comcast/time warner. will it drive up your bill. you re right. this from comcast, we re certainly not promising that customer bills will go down or increase less rapidly. and the fabulous jonny wer his hot pink jacket his leather leggings, his sassiness in sochi now controversial. talk to st. francis the pope pulling out cupid s arrow and offering advice to young couples.
and strongly in the public interest but he wouldn t promise that customer bills are going to go down or rise less rapidly. that was the big topic of conversation. look the average bill has been rising already for basic cable climbed from $39 a bill in 2000 to $78 in 2013. those fees are forecast to reach $110 by 2020. that s basic cable. before tacking on costs for premium channels and the internet. there are more and more bells and whistles to the services you re getting and providers would say it costs more to deliver them. this merger could limit your choices when you re shopping for cable providers especially like florida and north carolina they dominate. regulators could make comcast agree to certain conditions to prevent the kind of behavior that senator franken is talking about as they did in the comcast nbc universal deal.
that look at this and expressed my deep concerns. when you have monopolies very often you get with less competition you get less innovation. this is something we very much have to look at. and it seems the deal isn t being in handled so smoothly from inside the company either. according to a tweet by an l.a. times reporter on a conference call, comcast executive vice president said quote, we re certainly not promising that customer bills will go down or increase less rapidly. he actually said increase less rapidly. seriously? you re trying to sell me a deal by promising i m not going to safe any money now and i won t save any money in the future. joining me now to discuss, christine romans. this just does not sound like a good deal for consumers even from comcast. reporter: on that same conference call the ceo called it pro consumer, pro competitive