COTTAGE GROVE, Minn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 25, 2025--
Gateway Fiber marked a significant milestone with a celebratory ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 24, officially launching its high-speed fiber internet service for Cottage Grove residents and businesses. The event, attended by community leaders, residents, business owners, and Cottage Grove Area Chamber of Commerce members, reinforced Gateway Fiber's commitment to bringing next-generation connectivity and community partnership to the area.
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Cottage Grove becomes the first St. Paul area community to receive Gateway Fiber's 100% fiber-optic internet service, marking a major expansion in the company's Minneapolis metro footprint. This milestone follows the City of Cottage Grove's Request for Proposal (RFP) process, in which Gateway Fiber was selected to design, construct, and deploy state-of-the-art fiber optic infrastructure throughout the community.
“Today's ribbon-cutting ceremony is more than just the launch of service,” said John Meyer, Chief Customer Officer at Gateway Fiber. “It's a celebration of Cottage Grove's digital future. We're proud to invest in this community and provide fast, reliable internet that empowers families, businesses, and schools.”
The ceremony at Oakwood Park, which was hosted in collaboration with the Cottage Grove Area Chamber of Commerce, welcomed guests to learn about Gateway Fiber's offerings, connect with company representatives, and enjoy refreshments in the community setting. Attendees had the opportunity to discuss the benefits of fiber internet with the Gateway team and local ambassadors.
The expansion of Gateway's network will benefit residents and businesses with access to a new 100% fiber-optic network, delivering reliable, multi-gig symmetrical internet speeds far superior to cable, 5G, or telephone-based internet. Gateway Fiber's network offers symmetrical speeds up to 2 Gbps, enabling seamless remote work, online learning, streaming, and gaming.
Gateway Fiber provides simple, flat-rate, month-to-month pricing with no fees, installation charges, or surprise rate hikes. The company also provides whole-home Wi-Fi and outstanding customer service, with ratings nearly 70 points higher than the industry average.
Expanding services into Cottage Grove continues Gateway Fiber's commitment to investing in Minnesota by creating local jobs and supporting the local area, following recent launches in communities such as Shoreview, Plymouth, Blaine, Coon Rapids, Champlin, Brooklyn Park, and Maple Grove.
About Gateway Fiber
Gateway Fiber is on a mission to positively impact communities through a better internet. As data requirements for residences and businesses continue to expand, Gateway is creating a leading, national fiber-to-the-home platform to serve this critical unmet need. Gateway provides faster, more reliable internet with a simple pricing model and industry-leading customer service. In February, Gateway Fiber announced a strategic merger with E-Rate leader WANRack and its residential subsidiary, KWIKOM Communications. The merger creates a more powerful, scalable organization with enhanced growth opportunities for its employees, while expanding the combined organization’s offerings to meet the diverse internet needs of commercial, small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), and enterprise clients. For more information, visit gatewayfiber.com.
Community leaders joined Gateway Fiber representatives on July 24, 2025, to cut the ribbon on new fiber internet service coming to Cottage Grove, MN.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Myanmar insisted Friday that its deadly military campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority was a legitimate counter-terrorism operation and did not amount to genocide, as it defended itself at the top United Nations court against an allegation of breaching the genocide convention.
Myanmar launched the campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes as more than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh.
“Myanmar was not obliged to remain idle and allow terrorists to have free reign of northern Rakhine state,” the country’s representative Ko Ko Hlaing told black-robed judges at the International Court of Justice.
African nation Gambia brought a case at the court in 2019 alleging that Myanmar's military actions amount to a breach of the Genocide Convention that was drawn up in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.
Some 1.2 million members of the Rohingya minority are still languishing in chaotic, overcrowded camps in Bangladesh, where armed groups recruit children and girls as young as 12 are forced into prostitution. The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed last year by U.S. President Donald Trump shuttered thousands of the camps’ schools and have caused children to starve to death.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya Muslim minority to be “Bengalis” from Bangladesh even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982.
As hearings opened Monday, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow said his nation filed the case after the Rohingya “endured decades of appalling persecution, and years of dehumanizing propaganda. This culminated in the savage, genocidal ‘clearance operations’ of 2016 and 2017, which were followed by continued genocidal policies meant to erase their existence in Myanmar.”
Hlaing disputed the evidence Gambia cited in its case, including the findings of an international fact-finding mission set up by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council.
“Myanmar’s position is that the Gambia has failed to meet its burden of proof," he said. "This case will be decided on the basis of proven facts, not unsubstantiated allegations. Emotional anguish and blurry factual pictures are not a substitute for rigorous presentation of facts.”
Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi represented her country at jurisdiction hearings in the case in 2019, denying that Myanmar armed forces committed genocide and instead casting the mass exodus of Rohingya people from the country she led as an unfortunate result of a battle with insurgents.
The pro-democracy icon is now in prison after being convicted of what her supporters call trumped-up charges after a military takeover of power.
Myanmar contested the court’s jurisdiction, saying Gambia was not directly involved in the conflict and therefore could not initiate a case. Both countries are signatories to the genocide convention, and in 2022, judges rejected the argument, allowing the case to move forward.
Gambia rejects Myanmar's claims that it was combating terrorism, with Jallow telling judges on Monday that “genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference that can be drawn from Myanmar’s pattern of conduct.”
In late 2024, prosecutors at another Hague-based tribunal, the International Criminal Court, requested an arrest warrant for the head of Myanmar’s military regime for crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power from Suu Kyi in 2021, is accused of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Rohingya. The request is still pending.
FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2017, file photo, smoke rises from a burned house in Gawdu Zara village, northern Rakhine state, where the vast majority of the country's 1.1 million Rohingya lived, Myanmar. (AP Photo, File)
