"We believe a process that results in common sense baseline rules is critical to ensuring that the Internet remains a key engine of economic growth, innovation and global competitiveness," the group of 24 CEOs and Internet company founders, including Twitter's Evan Williams, wrote in a letter to be delivered to the FCC Monday in support of the proposed net-neutrality rules.

"An open Internet fuels a competitive and efficient marketplace, where consumers make the ultimate choices about which products succeed and which fail. This allows businesses of all sizes, from the smallest start-up to larger corporations, to compete, yielding maximum economic growth and opportunity," they wrote.

The letter comes on the eve of Julius Genachowski's first major act as FCC Chairman, when on Thursday the agency is scheduled to release details of its proposed net-neutrality rules. Both sides of the debate will then have months to tell the agency what they think of the proposed rules and how they should be changed, according to The Wall Street Journal.

According to the Journal's Digits blog, the Web companies were fed up with the barrage of letters that arrived at the FCC last week from net-neutrality opponents, including many a lawmaker, urging a cautious approach toward the new rules.

In particular, phone and cable companies are concerned that the FCC proposal will hurt business, and their lobbyists are in overdrive trying to water down some of the language.

The pro-net-neutrality coalition's other signers include Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and Digg founder Kevin Rose, along with net neutrality veterans, including Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, Google's Eric Schmidt and IAC/InteractiveCorp head Barry Diller.

Ahead of the proposed guidelines, "The above tech companies wanted to get one last pitch in front of Genachowski before he makes his announcement," writes Andy Beal on his Marketing Pilgrim blog. "Net Neutrality essentially ensures that ISPs can't charge extra fees based on the type of content flowing through their network pipes ... In otherwords, [sic] data is data is data and the likes of Comcast shouldn't be able to charge higher fees if that data is a blockbuster movie or your boss's TPS report!"