534
Opinion of the Court
incumbents to furnish, Congress negated a duty to combine that is not inconsistent with the obligation to furnish, but not expressly mentioned. Thus, it takes a stretch to get from permissive statutory silence to a statutory right on the part of the incumbents to refuse to combine for a requesting carrier, say, that is unable to make the combination, First Report and Order ¶ 294, or may even be unaware that it needs to combine certain elements to provide a telecommunications service. Id., ¶ 293. And these are the only instances in which the additional combination rules obligate the incumbents according to the FCC's clarification in the First Report and Order.
The conclusion that the language is open is certainly in harmony with, if not required by, our holding in Iowa Utilities Bd., dealing with Rule 315(b). In reinstating that rule, we rejected the argument that furnishing elements "on an unbundled basis," § 251(c)(3), must mean "physically separated," 525 U. S., at 394, and expressly noted that "§ 251(c)(3) is ambiguous on whether leased network elements may or must be separated," id., at 395. We relied on that ambiguity in holding that an incumbent has no statutory right to separate elements when a competitor asks to lease them in the combined form employed by the incumbent in its own network. Ibid. That holding would make a very odd partner with a ruling that an ambiguous § 251(c)(3) plainly empowers incumbent carriers to refuse to combine elements even when requesting carriers cannot. We accordingly read the language of § 251(c)(3) as leaving open who should do the work of combination, and under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984), that leaves the FCC's rules intact unless the incumbents can show them to be unreasonable.
For the decision whether Rules 315(c)-(f) survive Chevron step two, Iowa Utilities Bd. is, to be sure, less immediate help, since in that case we found Rule 315(b) reasonable because it prevented incumbents from dismantling exist-
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