Cite as: 535 U. S. 467 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
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We cannot say whether the passage of time will show competition prompted by TELRIC to be an illusion, but TELRIC appears to be a reasonable policy for now, and that is all that counts. See Chevron, 467 U. S., at 866. The incumbents have failed to show that TELRIC is unreasonable on its own terms, largely because they fall into the trap of mischaracterizing the FCC's departures from the assumption of a perfectly competitive market (the wire-center limitation, regulatory and development lags, or the refusal to prescribe high depreciation and capital costs) as inconsistencies rather than pragmatic features of the TELRIC plan. Nor have they shown it was unreasonable for the FCC to pick TELRIC over alternative methods, or presented evidence to rebut the entrants' figures as to the level of competitive investment in local-exchange markets. In short, the incumbents have failed to carry their burden of showing unreasonableness to defeat the deference due the Commission. We therefore reverse the Eighth Circuit's judgment insofar as it invalidated TELRIC as a method for setting rates under the Act.
C
The incumbents' claim of TELRIC's inherent inadequacy to deal with depreciation or capital costs has its counterpart in a further argument. They seek to apply the rule of constitutional avoidance in saying that "cost" ought to be construed by reference to historical investment in order to avoid a serious constitutional question, whether a methodology so divorced from investment actually made will lead to a taking of property in violation of the Fifth (or Fourteenth) Amendment. The Eighth Circuit did not think any such serious question was in the offing, 219 F. 3d, at 753-754, and neither do we.
At the outset, it is well to understand that the incumbent carriers do not present the portent of a constitutional
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