Italian Bike Race, Il Giro d'Italia, Streamed Live on the iPhone Across the Akamai HD Network

MILAN, May 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today announced that the 93rd edition of Il Giro d'Italia – a leading cycle race in Italy and one of the most popular in the world – is being streamed globally, live across the Akamai HD Network. The Akamai HD Network will enable viewers to follow Il Giro d'Italia live to their iPhone as well as on the La Gazzetta dello Sport website, the leading daily sport newspaper in Italy and organizer of "Il Giro d'Italia".

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In order to offer race fans the chance to view Il Giro d'Italia from anywhere in the world while offering a top quality online experience with no waiting times or interruptions, La Gazzetta dello Sport is relying on the Akamai HD Network to support its live streaming. . The race will be broadcasted live daily from approximately 8 am – 11 am Eastern Standard Time.  The Akamai HD Network is designed to support live high quality video delivery to the iPhone through adaptive bitrate streaming - a feature that automatically adapts to a user's fluctuating Internet conditions to enable smooth playback and improved viewing experiences. As such, all of the 120,000 iPhone users who have already downloaded the GazzettadelloSport.it application will have access to the live event on the go.

"Il Giro d'Italia is a prestigious and very popular sporting event. We are delighted that Akamai will contribute to offer sports enthusiasts the very first live streaming experience of this race on the iPhone," commented Alex Gibbons, Akamai Director of Digital Media, Europe. "With Akamai's technology, users will be able to experience all the drama of this event in the palm of their hand. Akamai has successfully delivered hundreds of events across its HD Network with great availability, performance and quality."

Akamai's HD Network was developed with the goal of delivering the highest quality experience at broadcast audience scale(1) across the industry's most popular devices, platforms and runtimes, and enabling large-scale broadcasters and film distributors to increase audience engagement and expand revenues through higher quality video playback and interactivity. Akamai's HD Network was further designed to allow content owners and publishers to deliver live and on-demand content while leveraging an infrastructure of tens of thousands of HTTP servers deployed globally in ISP servers. For further information about Akamai HD Network: www.akamai.com/hdnetwork

The Akamai Difference

Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering video, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online.  Having pioneered the content delivery market one decade ago, Akamai's services have been adopted by the world's most recognized brands across diverse industries.  The alternative to centralized Web infrastructure, Akamai's global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online.  Akamai has transformed the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate.  To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.

(1) Defined as the average Nielsen audience

Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, the effects of any attempts to intentionally disrupt our services or network by hackers or others, failure of our services to operate as expected, unexpected termination of Akamai's relationship with La Gazzetta dello Sport, a failure of Akamai's network infrastructure, and other factors that are discussed in Akamai's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.