Cite as: 525 U. S. 366 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
after [the date of enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996,] the Commission shall complete all actions necessary to establish regulations to implement the requirements of this section." 47 U. S. C. § 251(d) (1994 ed., Supp. II). The FCC relies on this section as an alternative source of jurisdiction, arguing that if it was necessary for Congress to include an express jurisdictional grant in the 1996 Act, § 251(d) does the job. Respondents counter that this provision functions only as a time constraint on the exercise of regulatory authority that the Commission has been given in the six subsections of § 251 that specifically mention the FCC. See §§ 251(b)(2), 251(c)(4)(B), 251(d)(2), 251(e), 251(g), 251(h)(2). Our understanding of the Commission's general authority under § 201(b) renders this debate academic.9
The jurisdictional objections we have addressed thus far pertain to an asserted lack of what might be called underlying FCC jurisdiction. The remaining jurisdictional argument is that certain individual provisions in the 1996 Act negate particular aspects of the Commission's implementing authority. With regard to pricing, respondents point to § 252(c), which provides:
9 Justice Thomas says that the grants of authority to the Commission in § 251 would have been unnecessary "[i]f Congress believed . . . that § 201(b) provided the FCC with plenary authority to promulgate regulations." Post, at 408. We have already explained that three of the five provisions on which Justice Thomas relies are not grants of authority at all. See n. 8, supra. And the remaining two do not support his argument because they are not redundant of § 201(b). Section 251(e), which provides that "[t]he Commission shall create or designate one or more impartial entities to administer telecommunications numbering," requires the Commission to exercise its rulemaking authority, as opposed to § 201(b), which merely authorizes the Commission to promulgate rules if it so chooses. Section 251(h)(2) says that the FCC "may, by rule, provide for the treatment of a local exchange carrier . . . as an incumbent local exchange carrier for purposes of [§ 251]" if the carrier satisfies certain requirements. This provision gives the Commission authority beyond that conferred by § 201(b); without it, the FCC certainly could not have saddled a nonincumbent carrier with the burdens of incumbent status.
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