Cite as: 525 U. S. 366 (1999)
Opinion of Breyer, J.
dominance. See United States v. American Tel. & Tel., supra, at 165; see generally A. Kahn, Letting Go: Deregulating the Process of Deregulation, or: Temptation of the Kleptocrats and the Political Economy of Regulatory Disingenuousness 37-38, and n. 53 (1998) (discussing the debate). Whether the decree's tradeoff made sense—i. e., whether the existence of some such local-firm/long-distance-service advantage warranted the decree's prohibition limiting the number of potential long-distance competitors—became a fertile source for later argument. See, e. g., MacAvoy, supra, at 171-177 (arguing that oligopolistic conditions in long-distance markets have produced supranormal profits that would not be sustainable with increased competition); Robinson, The Titanic Remembered: AT&T and the Changing World of Telecommunications, 5 Yale J. Reg. 517, 537 (1988) (arguing that the rationale for the decree's restrictions on local service companies was "just as persuasive" as that underlying the decree).
The Act before us responds to this argument by changing the postdecree status quo in two important ways. First, it creates a legal method through which local telephone service companies may enter long-distance markets, thereby providing additional long-distance competition. See 47 U. S. C. § 271(c)(2)(B) (1994 ed., Supp. II) (listing 14 conditions that, if met, permit incumbent local firms to enter long-distance market). Second, it conditions that long-distance entry upon either (1) the introduction of competition into local markets, or (2) the failure of a competing carrier to request access to or interconnection with the local service supplier (or the competing carrier's failure to engage in "good faith" negotiations). §§ 271(c)(1)(A), (B). The existence of these two alternatives is important. In setting forth the first alternative, actual local competition, the statute recognizes that local service competition would diminish any special long-distance advantages that the local firm has, thereby lessening the need for the decree's long-distance-market
415
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