Akamai Selected to Stream UNHCR's 50th Anniversary Concert in Geneva
The UNHCR's first-ever cyber-show will take place on the 14th of December at 9pm CET (20:00hrs GMT). In cooperation with Akamai, the refugee agency is going to webcast its 50th anniversary concert, 'Refugee Voices,' on its dedicated website, www.UNHCR-50.org.
The UNHCR celebration will prove more than just a concert. It is expected to be one of the largest single gatherings of refugee musicians who have come together to showcase their creativity and talents. The Internet event will host world-famous stars such as Geoffrey Oryema and the Burundi Drummers alongside up-and-coming musicians, such as Keinaan and Rasha. The evening will also see Senegal's superstar Youssou N'Dour launch a special Refugee Education Trust for secondary school-age refugee children.
A special band and a large chorus - both made up of refugees - have been put together for this evening. The UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador for the Nordic region singer Arje Saijonmaa will act as MC. The event's Creative Advisor is Brian Eno.
The programme will also include the unveiling of a public awareness campaign, RESPECT. This campaign will feature prominent refugees such as politician Madeleine Albright, writer Isabel Allende and supermodel Alek Wek.
Wolfgang Stähle, President of Akamai Europe, said "This engagement by UNHCR is without a doubt a very important project. It emphasises that streaming media is continuing to attain a greater significance concerning the distribution of important issues over the Internet."
Hans Thoolen, Senior Coordinator, 50th Anniversary Unit, UNHCR commented, "For organizations like the UNHCR, the Internet is continuing to become more and more important to communicate information and achievements. With this webcast, we are now entering the next level of communications, using a global medium such as the Internet to reach our audience, which is by definition global. As this is a new era for us, we needed a partner with extensive experience, and a high-quality solution."
Thoolen added, "We realized that Akamai is a leading streaming media provider that can meet our high quality standards by enabling the delivery of streaming media to a global audience. We are confident that Akamai is going to be key to the success of the webcast, a medium that seems to be made for reaching refugee groups and supporters who live in many far flung places."
Akamai's FreeFlowSM Streaming service is a highly innovative streaming solution that combines the ability to evaluate real-time Internet conditions, server capacity, content location and user location, with an advanced delivery mechanism for utilizing both the terrestrial Internet and best-of-breed satellite capabilities. Akamai's FreeFlow Streaming service uses proprietary technology called StreadyStreamSM to get a "lossless stream to the edge of the Internet" which includes both live and on-demand streams. With SteadyStream, Akamai is delivering the original quality streams from the edges of the Internet. The more servers located closer to end users means the better the quality of the streams for both live and on-demand streams. The scalability of the Akamai network ensures an unparalleled reach to support worldwide audiences, or hundreds of thousands of concurrent streams.
About UNHCR
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was founded by the U.N. General Assembly and began work in 1951 to help millions of European refugees in the aftermath of World War II. In the intervening decades, as refugee problems spread across the globe, UNHCR has helped resettle and repatriate as many as 50 million people on every continent, earning two Nobel Peace Prizes in the process. Today, with a staff of more than 5,000 and offices in 120 countries, the agency is helping an additional 22.3 million people. UNHCR's most important function is international protection -- ensuring the rights of refugees including preventing any forcible return to the homeland they fled from and seeking durable solutions through their resettlement or repatriation. As the scope of refugee crises has increased, so has UNHCR's activities, and it now helps not only refugees but other groups such as people internally displaced in their own countries and returnees. UNHCR has been the lead humanitarian agency for three of the biggest tragedies in postwar history: in the former Yugoslavia, in Africa's Great Lakes and, most recently, in Kosovo and surrounding states and in Timor. For more information see www.unhcr.ch
About Akamai
Akamai is the leading Content Delivery Service Provider, serving over 2,800 customers worldwide. Akamai has the broadest deployment of servers for content, streaming media, and applications delivery with more than 6,000 servers in 54 countries directly connected within 335 different telecommunications networks. Akamai Technologies, Inc. is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and has European subsidiaries in London, England, Paris, France, and Munich, Germany - which also serves as Akamai's EMEA headquarters. Further information is available at 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, the dependence on Akamai's Internet content delivery service, a failure of its network infrastructure, the complexity of its service and the networks on which the service is deployed, the failure to obtain access to transmission capacity and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.
| Contacts: |
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| Michael Zimmermann Akamai Technologies Europe 089/94 00 60 mzimmermann@akamai.com |
--or-- | Jürgen Rast Harvard Public Relations 089 - 53 29 57 - 0 jrast@harvard.de |
| Stefanie Weckerle Harvard Public Relations 089 - 53 29 57 - 0 weckerle@harvard.de |
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UNHCR makes their 50th Anniversary available to a global audience using Akamai's FreeFlowSM Streaming Service
Geneva, Switzerland - Munich, Germany - 13. December 2000: Akamai Technologies GmbH, the German subsidiary of Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading Content Delivery Service Provider (CDSP), today announced that it has been selected by the UNHCR 50 Foundation to deliver the streaming media for UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) 50th anniversary celebration to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, and broadcast live via the Web to a global audience.The UNHCR's first-ever cyber-show will take place on the 14th of December at 9pm CET (20:00hrs GMT). In cooperation with Akamai, the refugee agency is going to webcast its 50th anniversary concert, 'Refugee Voices,' on its dedicated website, www.UNHCR-50.org.
The UNHCR celebration will prove more than just a concert. It is expected to be one of the largest single gatherings of refugee musicians who have come together to showcase their creativity and talents. The Internet event will host world-famous stars such as Geoffrey Oryema and the Burundi Drummers alongside up-and-coming musicians, such as Keinaan and Rasha. The evening will also see Senegal's superstar Youssou N'Dour launch a special Refugee Education Trust for secondary school-age refugee children.
A special band and a large chorus - both made up of refugees - have been put together for this evening. The UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador for the Nordic region singer Arje Saijonmaa will act as MC. The event's Creative Advisor is Brian Eno.
The programme will also include the unveiling of a public awareness campaign, RESPECT. This campaign will feature prominent refugees such as politician Madeleine Albright, writer Isabel Allende and supermodel Alek Wek.
Wolfgang Stähle, President of Akamai Europe, said "This engagement by UNHCR is without a doubt a very important project. It emphasises that streaming media is continuing to attain a greater significance concerning the distribution of important issues over the Internet."
Hans Thoolen, Senior Coordinator, 50th Anniversary Unit, UNHCR commented, "For organizations like the UNHCR, the Internet is continuing to become more and more important to communicate information and achievements. With this webcast, we are now entering the next level of communications, using a global medium such as the Internet to reach our audience, which is by definition global. As this is a new era for us, we needed a partner with extensive experience, and a high-quality solution."
Thoolen added, "We realized that Akamai is a leading streaming media provider that can meet our high quality standards by enabling the delivery of streaming media to a global audience. We are confident that Akamai is going to be key to the success of the webcast, a medium that seems to be made for reaching refugee groups and supporters who live in many far flung places."
Akamai's FreeFlowSM Streaming service is a highly innovative streaming solution that combines the ability to evaluate real-time Internet conditions, server capacity, content location and user location, with an advanced delivery mechanism for utilizing both the terrestrial Internet and best-of-breed satellite capabilities. Akamai's FreeFlow Streaming service uses proprietary technology called StreadyStreamSM to get a "lossless stream to the edge of the Internet" which includes both live and on-demand streams. With SteadyStream, Akamai is delivering the original quality streams from the edges of the Internet. The more servers located closer to end users means the better the quality of the streams for both live and on-demand streams. The scalability of the Akamai network ensures an unparalleled reach to support worldwide audiences, or hundreds of thousands of concurrent streams.
About UNHCR
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was founded by the U.N. General Assembly and began work in 1951 to help millions of European refugees in the aftermath of World War II. In the intervening decades, as refugee problems spread across the globe, UNHCR has helped resettle and repatriate as many as 50 million people on every continent, earning two Nobel Peace Prizes in the process. Today, with a staff of more than 5,000 and offices in 120 countries, the agency is helping an additional 22.3 million people. UNHCR's most important function is international protection -- ensuring the rights of refugees including preventing any forcible return to the homeland they fled from and seeking durable solutions through their resettlement or repatriation. As the scope of refugee crises has increased, so has UNHCR's activities, and it now helps not only refugees but other groups such as people internally displaced in their own countries and returnees. UNHCR has been the lead humanitarian agency for three of the biggest tragedies in postwar history: in the former Yugoslavia, in Africa's Great Lakes and, most recently, in Kosovo and surrounding states and in Timor. For more information see www.unhcr.ch
About Akamai
Akamai is the leading Content Delivery Service Provider, serving over 2,800 customers worldwide. Akamai has the broadest deployment of servers for content, streaming media, and applications delivery with more than 6,000 servers in 54 countries directly connected within 335 different telecommunications networks. Akamai Technologies, Inc. is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and has European subsidiaries in London, England, Paris, France, and Munich, Germany - which also serves as Akamai's EMEA headquarters. Further information is available at www.akamai.com
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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 dependence on Akamai's Internet content delivery service, a failure of its network infrastructure, the complexity of its service and the networks on which the service is deployed, the failure to obtain access to transmission capacity and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.
