BALTIMORE—The commercial drone industry wants to create a privately funded and operated air-traffic control network, separate from the current federal system, to enable widespread operations at low altitudes.

Plans to accelerate such efforts, spelled out at a conference here this week, have the backing of companies like Amazon.com Inc., General Electric Co., Boeing Co. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Proponents envision one day using automated cellular and web applications to track and prevent collisions among swarms of small...