424
Opinion of Breyer, J.
chef the authority to choose a menu while restricting him to one dish, an omelette, and to one single favorite recipe.
Nor can the FCC successfully argue that the Act requires the particular ratesetting system that its regulations contain. The FCC's system, which the FCC calls "forward-looking," bases the charge for the use of an unbundled element (say, a set of local wires connecting a subscriber to a local switch) upon a hypothetical set of costs—the costs of providing that service using the incumbent's actual wire center, but otherwise assuming use of the most efficient technology that the incumbent could use (not the equipment the incumbent actually does use). See First Report & Order
¶¶ 682, 685, supra, at 15847-15849. The FCC does not claim that the statute's language (though ruling out certain kinds of rate-of-return proceedings, 47 U. S. C. § 252(d)(1)(A)(i) (1994 ed., Supp. II)) forces use of this forward-looking cost determination system. Moreover, I have explained above why I do not believe the Act's purposes demand what its language denies, namely, a single nationwide ratesetting system. Supra, at 417-418; cf. First Report & Order ¶ 114, 11 FCC Rcd, at 15558-15559 (arguing that a single pricing methodology is needed to assure uniform administration of the Act).
The FCC does argue that the Act's purpose, competition, favors its system. For competition, according to the FCC, tends to produce prices that reflect forward-looking replacement costs, not actual historical costs. E. g., id., ¶ 672, 11 FCC Rcd, at 15844. But this argument does not show that the Act compels the use of the FCC's system over any other. How could it? The competition that the Act seeks is a process, not an end result; and a regulatory system that imposes through administrative mandate a set of prices that tries to mimic those that competition would have set does not thereby become any the less a regulatory process, nor any the more a competitive one.
Most importantly, the FCC's rules embody not an effort to circumscribe the realm of the reasonable, but rather a
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