522
Opinion of the Court
sion's prescription of a general "starting point" is reasonable enough. c
Finally, as to the incumbents' accusation that TELRIC is too complicated to be practical, a criticism at least as telling can be leveled at traditional ratemaking methodologies and the alternatives proffered. "One important potential advantage of the T[E]LRIC approach, however is its relative ease of calculation. Rather than estimate costs reflecting the present [incumbent] network—a difficult task even if [incumbents] provided reliable data—it is possible to generate T[E]LRIC estimates based on a 'green field' approach, which assumes construction of a network from scratch." App. 182 (Reply Comments of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration 24 (May 30, 1996)). To the extent that the traditional public-utility model generally relied on embedded costs, similar sorts of complexity in reckoning were exacerbated by an asymmetry of information, much to the utilities' benefit. See supra, at 486-487, 499. And what we see from the record suggests that TELRIC rate proceedings are surprisingly smooth-running affairs, with incumbents and competitors typically presenting two conflicting economic models supported by expert testimony, and state commissioners customarily assigning rates based on some predictions from one model and others from its counterpart. See, e. g., 1 Lodging Material for Respondents Worldcom, Inc., et al. 146-147, 367-368 (Fla. Pub. Serv. Comm'n, In re: Determination of cost of basic local telecommunications service, pursuant to Section 364.025, Florida Statutes, issued Jan. 7, 1999); 2 id., at 589-598, 701-704 (N. Y. Pub. Serv. Comm'n, Opinion No. 97-2, supra). At bottom, battles of experts are bound to be part of any ratesetting scheme, and the FCC was reasonable to prefer TELRIC over alternative fixed-cost schemes that preserve home-field advantages for the incumbents.
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