Ministry of Sound radio becomes world leader with Akamai

Contacts:
David Fowler Operations Director, Media Ministry of Sound 0207 740 8750 dfowler@ministryofsound.com	--or--	Suzy Dowsett Octopus 01753 672755 suzy@octopuscomms.net
Jessica Simpson Octopus 01753 672755 jessica@octopuscomms.net

Dance radio site ranked 1st in its genre and 8th overall in Arbitron's Top Ten Global Webcast Ratings following 62% audience increase

London, UK - 30 January 2002 - Ministry of Sound has been confirmed as the world's biggest dance music Internet radio station after being ranked 8th in Arbitron's Top Ten Webcast Ratings. The accolade follows Ministry of Sound's adoption of Akamai's streaming media service. The global, high-quality delivery of the site's dance music programming has helped create a 62 per cent increase in traffic.

According to data from Arbitron Webcast Ratings, Ministry of Sound's aggregate tuning hours (ATH), the sum total of all hours that listeners tune to a given channel, has doubled in the last year, to reach 188,200 hours per month in December 2001. "We're delighted with this exponential growth, especially as we do not have the benefit of a terrestrial station," said David Fowler, Operations Director, Media, at Ministry of Sound. "There is no doubt that working with Akamai has helped to make Ministry of Sound the biggest dedicated dance site in the world."

Ministry of Sound needed to overcome the challenges of streaming audio programming over the Internet to a diverse and global audience. Its decision to use Akamai's worldwide distribution platform of servers, located close to listeners, enabled Ministry of Sound to maintain its broadcasting quality while tapping into the massive audience growth. "Akamai's distributed approach and truly global geographic reach has given us the edge. We are maintaining the highest quality in delivery, reliability and performance by providing all our listeners with an excellent audio streaming experience, as though delivered from their local market," Fowler added.

John Apthorpe, Service Delivery Manager, NER, Akamai, commented: "Using our established server platform, Ministry of Sound can now capitalise on its potential and scale up without further infrastructure investment. It can cope with peaks in demand without having to provision for additional bandwidth. Our Traffic Analyzer SM reporting tools are also allowing Ministry of Sound to present a very strong case for audio advertising strategies, showing the audience number, location and listening time, and thereby creating additional advertising revenue streams for the company."

Based on the positive performance results, Ministry of Sound has chosen to maximize its use of the Akamai Platform by deploying Akamai EdgeSuite^SM - an integrated set of services that includes capabilities for whole Web site delivery, content targeting, and business intelligence.

Akamai's streaming capabilities are built upon the Akamai Platform that uses sophisticated algorithms to monitor the Internet on a real-time basis, understand the location of the requesting user, and make intelligent decisions about the best and most efficient Akamai edge server from which to deliver content to the end user. The service incorporates Akamai's proprietary SteadyStream^SM technology that sends multiple copies of the same stream to the edges of the Internet and then recombines the streams into the original high quality format

About Akamai
Akamai is a leading provider of secure, outsourced e-business infrastructure services and software. These services and software enable companies to reduce the complexity and cost of deploying and operating a uniform Web infrastructure while ensuring unmatched performance, reliability, scalability and manageability. Akamai's services give businesses a distinct competitive advantage and provide an unparalleled Internet experience for their customers. Akamai's intelligent edge platform for content, streaming media, and application delivery comprises more than 13,500 servers within over 1,000 networks in 66 countries. With headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Akamai provides services and industry-renowned customer care to hundreds of enterprises worldwide, including dozens of Fortune 500 businesses. For information on Delivering a Better Internet^SM, visit www.akamai.com.

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, general economic conditions, the dependence on Akamai's Internet content delivery service and technology products, potential difficulties that Akamai may encounter in attempting to expand its business into international markets, a failure of Akamai's network infrastructure, Akamai's ability to protect its intellectual property rights and inventions from third party challenges, and other factors that are discussed in the Akamai's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.