ISTANBUL and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Turk Telekom, Turkey's leading communication and convergence technologies company, and Akamai Technologies, the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications, announced today they have signed a strategic partnership to jointly build and manage a high-capacity Operator Content Delivery Network (OCDN) in Turkey for high-quality delivery of online content and video. The partnership which will optimize the network efficiency of Turkey's Internet infrastructure was announced at a press conference in London attended by Turk Telekom CEO Tahsin Yilmaz and Akamai CEO Tom Leighton.

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The partnership will ensure a significant increase in speed and performance for broadband and mobile users in Turkey, particularly when accessing social media and popular online video sites. It will also allow Turkish media companies to provide high quality content to their audiences outside of Turkey. With this business partnership, Turk Telekom joins a select group of leading telecommunications companies who have entered a strategic partnership with Akamai to serve global and local customers on a joint technology and network platform.

Speaking at the press conference, Turk Telekom CEO Tahsin Yilmaz commented that this strategic partnership demonstrated Turk Telekom's commitment to lead the transformation of digital life in Turkey:

"Turk Telekom built the communication infrastructure in Turkey and continues to invest in new technologies. Our collaboration with Akamai is one of the key steps we have taken in this area. As the leader of the Turkish telecommunication industry, we'll be offering benefits in cost and accessibility to all players in the Internet sector, from content providers and media organizations to the end users who access their services. Akamai is one of the largest providers of content delivery and cloud services in the world and by providing faster access to popular rich media content within Turkey, both companies will ensure a highly efficient and top performing user experience to all of the stakeholders in the industry."

Tahsin Yilmaz continued, "This partnership will also significantly reduce our network costs associated with traffic originating from content across the globe. Better yet, we will be making a significant contribution to Turkey's economy, as data traffic and services within Turkey will be accessed by users in other countries. In a sense, we'll be exporting data to many international customers."

Akamai co-founder and CEO Tom Leighton made the following remarks at the press conference:

"Akamai's Aura Network Solutions enable Turk Telekom to offer compelling new services and address consumer demand for online content and video in a manner that drives revenue opportunities, provides a superior user experience, manages network costs, and simplifies video distribution. Turkey is an important and growing Internet market and provides significant opportunity for the adoption of media and cloud services. Our partnership with Turk Telekom is a great way for both companies to bring new, innovative services to market and assist companies doing business inside the country and within the region. Over the coming years, we look forward to innovate together with Turk Telekom on cloud and network optimization solutions."

Turk Telekom-Akamai partnership optimizes speed and performance on the Internet

Companies rely on Akamai to provide secure, high performing user experiences on any device, anywhere. The collaboration between Turk Telekom and Akamai will provide global companies even faster performance to deliver their services inside Turkey. In addition, the partnership will allow Internet users much faster access to the content of domestic and international origin made available through the Akamai Intelligent Platform. With the Turk Telekom Aura CDN, global content will become more distributed toward the edge of the Turk Telekom infrastructure. The result will be faster page and download times, lower latency, higher quality online video and even better experience for Internet users in Turkey.

For companies inside Turkey looking to deliver content within the country or even globally, the Turk Telekom CDN can be utilized to provide better performance and scale. In addition, the Akamai Intelligent Platform will provide global delivery of that content utilizing its highly distributed servers throughout most areas of the world.

Paying by the amount of data traffic without the need to invest in additional servers, content portals, e-commerce platforms, media organizations, and site owners will be able to keep costs under control and thereby provide uninterrupted and fast service unaffected by unexpected surges in traffic.

Delivering 15 to 30% of the world's web traffic, Akamai is a market share leader in online content and application distribution. Akamai's global platform redirects the web requests targeting the sites of its contracted content providers to more than 141,000 servers dispersed throughout the world. Providing content at the most suitable quality by optimizing it according to the capacities of the network to which the user is connected and the device they are using, Akamai minimizes wait periods for visitors accessing global content sites, ensuring the most efficient utilization of infrastructure capacity and bandwidth.

About Akamai
Akamai(®) is the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications. At the core of the Company's solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platform(TM) providing extensive reach, coupled with first class reliability, security, visibility and expertise. Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling enterprises to securely leverage the cloud. To learn more about how Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

About Turk Telekomunikasyon A.S.
Turk Telekom is Turkey's leading communication and convergence technologies company with its modern network infrastructure covering the whole country. Offering a wide range of services to residential and commercial customers in fixed lines and broadband Internet, Turk Telekomunikasyon A.S. has 13.7 million Fixed Access Lines, and 7.2 million Broadband connections (bulk) as of September 30, 2013. Turk Telekom pioneers in developing and implementing the low-carbon business model in Turkey with its works towards social, economic and environmental sustainability, also transforms its products and services, office practices and work processes according to sustainability principles in order to achieve this purpose and considers including all of its employees, their families, suppliers and customers into this process as a part of its strategy. Turk Telekom is the first telecommunication company calculating and reporting its carbon footprint to CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) in Turkey.

About Turk Telekom Group
Turk Telekom Group, the leading communication and convergence technology group in Turkey, provides integrated telecommunication services from PSTN and GSM to broadband internet. As of September 30, 2013; Turk Telekom Group companies have 13.7 mn Fixed Access Lines, 7.2 mn Broadband Connections and 14.1 mn Mobile Subscribers. Group companies have a modern network infrastructure covering the whole country and offer a wide variety of services to residential and commercial customers all over Turkey. Apart from 90 % shares in Avea, one of the three GSM operators in Turkey, Turk Telekom owns 100% of broadband provider TTNET, convergence technologies company Argela, IT solutions provider Innova, online education company Sebit, call center company AssisTT and wholesale data and capacity service provider company Turk Telekom International AT AG and its subsidiaries. Turk Telekom also has an indirect minority share in Albtelecom, the Albanian incumbent telecom operator. Turk Telekom shares are listed in Istanbul Stock Exchange since May 2008.

Contacts:
Jeff Young Tom Barth
Media Relations Investor Relations
+1 617-444-3913 +1 617-274-7130
jyoung@akamai.com tbarth@akamai.com

Turk Telekom
Ibrahim Ozdemir
MESE Communication Consultancy
Phone: 0212 245 33 23
GSM: 0533 208 60 06
ibrahim@mese.com.tr

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.