As Page spoke at the Wireless Innovation Alliance's event in a U.S. Senate office building, two members of the House of Representatives issued a statement calling for the FCC to protect wireless microphone signals.

The FCC tests so far have not proven that white-spaces broadband devices can work, said the statement from Representative Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat, and Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat. In a handful of recent FCC tests, white-spaces prototype devices have failed, but generally because the devices stopped working, not because the devices interfered with TV stations or wireless microphones.

"This is an issue that can only be resolved through science and, frankly, the tests performed by the FCC in its own labs and in the field have not proved that these white space devices can reliably detect the presence of a wireless microphone or a TV signal," the two lawmakers said in their joint statement. "We can all agree that FCC policy should foster innovation and encourage the efficient use of public airwaves, but new changes must not come at the expense of wireless microphones, which provide an important public good."

In addition to Page, representatives of Microsoft, Motorola, Dell and other companies spoke at the white spaces event. Allowing broadband devices on the white spaces spectrum would spark hundreds of millions of dollars in new technology investment and may present the last chance the U.S. has for creating a new national broadband network that competes with cable and telecom companies, participants said.

Representative Jay Inslee, a Washington state Democrat, said opponents of white spaces are interested in protecting their turf. "If you are for innovation, you are for the white spaces," he said.

The technology exists to use white spaces devices without interfering with other signals, added Mark McHenry, CEO of Shared Spectrum, a company that sells spectrum-sensing radio technology to the U.S. military. Shared Spectrum's radio equipment allows the U.S. military to set up wireless networks in other countries without interfering with local television, he said.

The company is "convinced" that white spaces devices can work without interfering in the U.S., he said.