A federal appellate court decision on Tuesday raises the prospect that Netflix Inc. and other bandwidth-hogging websites may have to pay tolls to broadband providers to ensure quality service, a change that would throw a wrench into their business models and potentially raise prices for consumers.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the Federal Communications Commission's so-called "open Internet" rules that had required equal treatment of Internet traffic and prohibited broadband providers from blocking traffic, favoring certain sites or charging special fees to companies that account for the most traffic.

Streaming-video provider Netflix accounts for 32% of peak Internet traffic in North America, the most of any content provider, according to Sandvine, a broadband services company. That has made Netflix a target for some cable industry executives who have argued the company should be subsidizing the costs of delivering its service to consumers.

In an interview last summer, for instance, Charter Communications Inc. Chief Executive Tom Rutledge noted that currently all broadband capacity is "paid for by the consumer" but "you could argue that it would be more efficient for consumers if the people who are taking the bandwidth for a product were paying for the bandwidth in some fair and proportional way."

The implications for Netflix of paying a new content-delivery fee could be significant. The company's finely balanced business model assumes it will make large investments to acquire the rights to TV shows and movies that it offers and factors in some costs related to moving data efficiently on the Internet's backbone. But a new fee charged by Internet providers, if it is sizable, could dent the company's profits or force it to raise prices for consumers.