Several days after a number of House Democrats voiced their concern with upcoming net neutrality rules, the chief executives of 24 major tech companies, including Twitter and Facebook, penned a letter to the Federal Communications Commission in support of the initiative.

Several days after a number of House Democrats with upcoming net neutrality rules, the chief executives of 24 major tech companies, including Twitter and Facebook, penned a letter to the Federal Communications Commission in support of the initiative.

"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 chief executives wrote to Chairman Julius Genachowski under the auspices of the Open Internet Coalition.

Executives who signed the letter include: Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter; Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook; John Donahoe, CEO of eBay; and Steve Chan, founder of YouTube. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google  which has long supported net neutrality  also signed the letter.

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

The FCC is expected to introduce formal rules regarding net neutrality at its Thursday October meeting. Net neutrality is the theory that everyone should have equal access to the Internet. In September, Genachowski to its Internet Policy Principles. The first would prevent ISPs from discriminating against particular Internet content or applications, while allowing for reasonable network management. The second would ensure that ISPs are transparent about network management.

The executives argued that the openness of the Internet has "fueled an unprecedented era of economic growth and creativity" and that the FCC's rules will help protect that. Detractors like certain telecom companies and the make a similar argument, but they say that an FCC rulemaking might actually stifle innovation.

Other companies that signed the letter include Amazon.com, Digg, LinkedIn, OpenDNS, Zynga, Vuze, Skype, Flickr, Cbeyond, Craigslist, EchoStar Corporation, Mozilla Corporation, Sony Electronics, XO Communications, Expedia, IAC, One Communications, and TiVo.

The Open Internet Coalition is a D.C.-based interest group that focuses on the protection of the open Internet.