The lights of the "Great White Way" could be extinguished by mobile wireless devices in the "white spaces" between digital-TV channels, at least according to the people who pay the light bills.

Broadway-theater owners squared off with the technology industry Wednesday over the issue of using those white spaces (opponents of the devices call them "interference zones") between DTV channels for unlicensed mobile devices like laptops and spectrum-sensing radios.

In the technology-industry corner was the Wireless Innovation Alliance, which includes Google, Dell, Microsoft and Motorola. It said Wednesday that it asked the Federal Communications Commission to back a "compromise" proposal for solving interference issues with wireless microphones -- which also use the TV-spectrum band -- pointing out that a combination of beacon and spectrum-sensing technology had been proposed by Shure, one of the top wireless-mic manufacturers.

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