Has Alcatel-Lucent Made Good on This Upgrade?

Analysts at Citigroup upgraded shares of Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) to Neutral and raised their price target to $1.73 last Wednesday, based on improved carrier spending throughout the industry and the company’s reduced risk of bankruptcy. Since the rating change, the telecom equipment manufacturer has already made good on the firm’s assessment to some degree.

Alcatel-Lucent announced on Wednesday that it had secured a deal with America Movil (NYSE:AMX), Latin America’s largest wireless services provider, to construct a 17,500-kilometer-long (10,875-mile-long) submarine cable system. This design will be the first system of its kind to send 100-gigabit-per-second transmissions, according to Alcatel’s press release.

Today, “100G technology is playing a fundamental role in scalability as operators are seeking to manage their bandwidth expansion to meet increasing demands for content-rich services and to address new applications such as data center interconnection needs,” said Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks, in the release.

The submarine cable line will connect seven countries with eleven landing points in the United States, Colombia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Guatemala…