The CEO of the nation's third largest cable company, Charter Communications, said that he is not concerned about the mobile industry’s 5G push. Those comments are specifically noteworthy considering Verizon announced this week that it will use 5G technology to directly challenge Charter, Comcast and other cable companies in the home internet space in up to 30 million households across the country.

“5G is a technology,” Charter’s Tom Rutledge told CNBC. “We have a better platform to deploy that technology, I think, than the cellular industry does because we are fully distributed from a high-capacity wireline perspective. If you think about what 5G is, it is small cells. Small cells mean you need lots of wireline connectivity to make the small cells work. We think we are actually in a better position to do that than traditional cellular companies. Yes, 5G can be used to compete against us. It is very capital-intensive. It requires essentially a wireline network like a FiOS to support the small cells.”

As for Verizon’s 5G Home service specifically, Rutledge said that by the end of this year Charter will be able to offer 1 Gbps speeds across its footprint via DOCSIS 3.1 technology, and in the coming years will be able to increase those speeds to 10 Gbps symmetrical via DOCSIS 3.1 Full Duplex. And that, he said, positions Charter well against 5G.