418
Opinion of Breyer, J.
cumstances will prove more beneficial than wasteful. It is the local communities, and, hence, local regulators, that will directly confront the problems and enjoy the benefits associated with local efforts to integrate new and old communications resources and communications firms. These factors, along with the fact that the relevant technology changes rapidly, argue in favor of, not against, local ratesetting control, including local ratesetting differences, for those differences can amount to the kind of "experimentation" long thought a strength of our federal system.
At most, the Act's purposes argue for a grant to the FCC of authority to set federal limitations preventing States from adopting forms of ratemaking that would interfere with the Act's basic objectives. The Act explicitly grants the FCC a particular pre-emption tool, not here invoked, which is apparently suited to that job. 47 U. S. C. § 253(d) (1994 ed., Supp. II) (permitting the FCC to pre-empt, after notice and comment, any state legal requirement that has the effect of prohibiting entry into local service). Such a grant could not help the FCC here, however, for, as I discuss below, infra, at 423-427, the FCC's rules do not just create an outer envelope or simply prevent the States from going too far. Rather, they effectively supplant much of a local regulator's local ratesetting work.
B
Read in light of its purposes, the Act's language more clearly foresees retention, not replacement, of the traditional allocation of state-federal ratesetting authority. Ante, at 405-406 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Sections 251 and 252, which establish and provide for implementation of new local service obligations, contain the relevant language.
Section 251 lists basic obligations that the Act imposes upon local incumbents. These include obligations to interconnect, to unbundle, to sell at wholesale rates, to provide "number portability," to assure "dialing parity," to negotiate
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