Cite as: 512 U. S. 218 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
208, 406, would not be susceptible of effective enforcement if rates were not publicly filed.4 See Maislin, supra, at 132. Rate filings are, in fact, the essential characteristic of a rate-regulated industry. It is highly unlikely that Congress would leave the determination of whether an industry will be entirely, or even substantially, rate-regulated to agency discretion—and even more unlikely that it would achieve that through such a subtle device as permission to "modify" rate-filing requirements.
Bearing in mind, then, the enormous importance to the statutory scheme of the tariff-filing provision, we turn to whether what has occurred here can be considered a mere "modification." The Commission stresses that its detariffing policy applies only to nondominant carriers, so that the rates charged to over half of all consumers in the long-distance market are on file with the Commission. It is not clear to us that the proportion of customers affected, rather than the proportion of carriers affected, is the proper measure of the extent of the exemption (of course all carriers in the long-distance market are exempted, except AT&T). But even assuming it is, we think an elimination of the crucial provision of the statute for 40% of a major sector of the industry is much too extensive to be considered a "modification." What we have here, in reality, is a fundamental revision of the statute, changing it from a scheme of rate regulation in long-distance common-carrier communications
4 The dissent misrepresents what we say in this sentence, see post, at 242, and addresses two paragraphs to an argument we have not made, post, at 242-244. We simply say, as did the Maislin Court, that eliminating the tariff-filing requirement would frustrate complaint proceedings; not that eliminating those requirements, or indeed even eliminating the complaint proceedings, would frustrate the ultimate purposes of the Act. Perhaps, as the dissent asserts, it would not; perhaps even eliminating the FCC would not do so. But we (and the FCC) are bound, not only by the ultimate purposes Congress has selected, but by the means it has deemed appropriate, and prescribed, for the pursuit of those purposes.
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