Australians Rally Online to Take Back the Ashes

Bangalore, Karnataka, India and Sydney, Australia , 2006-11-23

Australians have gone cricket crazy ‘online’ for the first day of the 2006 Ashes series.

According to Internet content delivery firm, Akamai, which services twenty nine of the top 30 media companies around the world, Australian news websites were receiving more than 126,000 visitors per minute, representing a 70 per cent increase in Internet traffic to these sites.

The Akamai Net News Index showed that almost four times as many people were following the cricket online than those watching at the Gabba.

Towards the end of play on day one, a major Australian sports website was receiving more than 11,700 unique visitors per hour as compared to a normal average of 3,000 visitors.

“Across the board, Australian news websites experienced an immediate 4 fold increase in visitors just before the first Ashes ball was bowled,” said Stuart Spiteri, Director of Akamai in Asia Pacific.

“Following this initial spike, Australians continued to follow the game ball by ball in growing numbers.

“These results demonstrate that the Internet is becoming the dominant channel for Australians to get real time updates on major news and sporting events.

“Today’s results reflect the similar massive online success of the ICC Champions Trophy, and proves that the Internet has come of age as the place to go for sports news.

“As consumers, and Australian cricket fans, look for real time information such as online scoreboards, video replays and audio streaming, they are turning to the Internet to find it,” Mr Spiteri said.

The Akamai Net News Index is available publicly at
http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/nui/news/index.html.

About Akamai

Akamai® is the leading global service provider for accelerating content and business processes online. Thousands of organisations have formed trusted relationships with Akamai, improving their revenue and reducing costs by maximising the performance of their online businesses.Leveraging the Akamai EdgePlatform, these organizations gain business advantage today, and have the foundation for the emerging Web solutions of tomorrow. Akamai is “The Trusted Choice for Online Business.” For more information, visit www.akamai.com.

Note to Editors:

How is the Akamai Net News Index data collected?

Without releasing any proprietary data about its individual news customers, Akamai aggregates data on behalf of over 100 leading news portal customers from around the world. Collectively, this data determines the consumption level of news in real-time, capturing total visitors per minute on a global scale and by geography, during a 24-hour period. By plotting visitors per minute for each day, the Akamai Net News Index is the first online barometer to measure interest levels by region and per major news event.

Methodology & Data Collection

The Akamai Net Usage Index is the world's first and only daily Web traffic benchmark that tracks where news is being consumed on a global basis. Akamai, as the content delivery platform for more than 100 global news portal companies, has a unique view into the daily Web traffic of major news sites. Akamai has been in business since 1999, and serves content on behalf of a large majority of the world's leading online news portals. Distributing over one billion page views daily for these news information sites, Akamai is in the unique position to be able to track news consumption on a global scale. At any point in time, millions of PC users (and increasing numbers of cell phone and other PDA users) are online consuming news.

To view the Net News Index click on the link below:

http://www.businesswireindia.com/attachments/Net_News_Index.jpg
Contact

Anuradha Muralidharan, Media Relations, Akamai Technologies, Inc, +91 (080) 575 99222
[email protected]