Cite as: 535 U. S. 467 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
utilities in the United States and the structure of local exchanges made accessible by the Act.
A
Companies providing telephone service have traditionally been regulated as monopolistic public utilities.2 See J. Bon-bright, Principles of Public Utility Rates 3-5 (1st ed. 1961) (hereinafter Bonbright); I. Barnes, Economics of Public Utility Regulation 37-41 (1942) (hereinafter Barnes). At the dawn of modern utility regulation, in order to offset monopoly power and ensure affordable, stable public access to a utility's goods or services, legislatures enacted rate schedules to fix the prices a utility could charge. See id., at 170-173; C. Phillips, Regulation of Public Utilities 111-112, and n. 5 (1984) (hereinafter Phillips). See, e. g., Smyth v. Ames, 169 U. S. 466, 470-476 (1898) (statement of case); Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113, 134 (1877). As this job became more complicated, legislatures established specialized administrative agencies, first local or state, then federal, to set and regulate rates. Barnes 173-175; Phillips 115-117. See, e. g., Minnesota Rate Cases, 230 U. S. 352, 433 (1913) (Interstate Commerce Commission); Shreveport Rate Cases, 234 U. S. 342, 354-355 (1914) ( jurisdictional dispute between ICC and Texas Railroad Commission). See generally T. McCraw, Prophets of Regulation 11-65 (1984). The familiar mandate in the enabling Acts was to see that rates be "just and reasonable" and not discriminatory. Barnes 289. See, e. g., Transportation Act of 1920, 49 U. S. C. § 1(5) (1934 ed.).
2 Nationalization, the historical policy choice for regulation of telephone service in many other countries, was rejected in the United States. Cohen, The Telephone Problem and the Road to Telephone Regulation in the United States, 1876-1917, 3 J. of Policy History 42, 46, 55-56, 65 (1991) (hereinafter Cohen); S. Vogel, Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries 26-27 (1996).
477
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