*Pages 1--3 from Microsoft Word - 25907.doc* Federal Communications Commission FCC 02- 342 Regardless of one’s view of the correct interpretation of the substantive standard in section 11, there should be no doubt that the requirement to determine whether competition has rendered certain rules obsolete establishes a very meaningful process. The Commission must assess the state of competition in the relevant market for a given rule and then determine whether the rule in its current form is no longer necessary in the public interest as a result of meaningful economic competition. Before Congress enacted section 11, the FCC was under no requirement to ascertain regularly the continued relevance of its rules or to justify their retention in the face of meaningful competition. Now, the Commission conducts a thorough analysis of all covered rules every two years, and where we find that a particular regulation no longer serves the public interest as a result of competition, we are required to repeal or modify it. Section 11 thus provides an important tool in carrying out Congress’s general preference for reducing regulation where competition has emerged, and that fact should not be obscured by the narrow debate over whether the Commission must repeal a rule that continues to serve the public interest solely because the rule cannot be proven to be indispensable. Ultimately, we hope that the Commission moves beyond this academic debate and translates words into deeds by actually reducing regulation where competition exists. 3