506
Opinion of the Court
tioner AT&T Corp. 11-12; and no one claims that a competitor could receive immediately on demand a TELRIC rate on a leased element at the marginal cost of the entrant who introduces a more efficient element.
But even if a competitor could call for a new TELRIC rate proceeding immediately upon the introduction of a more efficient element by a competing entrant, the competitor would not necessarily know enough to make the call; the fact of the element's greater efficiency would only become apparent when reflected in lower retail prices drawing demand away from existing competitors (including the incumbent), forcing them to look to lowering their own marginal costs. In practice, it would take some time for the innovating entrant to install the new equipment, to engage in marketing offering a lower retail price to attract business, and to steal away enough customer subscriptions (given the limited opportunity to capture untapped customers for local telephone service) for competitors to register the drop in demand.
Finally, it bears reminding that the FCC prescribes measurement of the TELRIC "based on the use of the most efficient telecommunications technology currently available," 47 CFR § 51.505(b)(1) (1997). Owing to that condition of current availability, the marginal cost of a most efficient element that an entrant alone has built and uses would not set a new pricing standard until it became available to competitors as an alternative to the incumbent's corresponding element.22
22 The Michigan state commission's September 1994 order implementing a long-run incremental cost method for leasing local-exchange network elements, which the FCC considered, see First Report and Order
¶ 631, and n. 1508, makes this limitation more explicit by specifying that rates are to be set based on the costs of elements using the most efficient technology "currently available for purchase." Michigan Pub. Serv. Comm'n, Re A Methodology to Determine Long Run Incremental Cost, 156 P. U. R. 4th 1, 7, 13 (1994).
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