COVID-19 has cast a shadow of uncertainty across many industries and the optical networking market is no exception. Despite the market uncertainty, a recent report from LightCounting found that optical sales have proven quite robust, with several large cloud providers expected to move forward with optical deployments.

While some data centers have postponed plans to implement 200 Gb/s optics until next year, Google and Amazon are both moving forward with 400 Gb/s Ethernet, the report concluded. Meanwhile, demand for 100 Gb/s optics in China is expected to set new records.

Across the industry, however, LightCounting is forecasting only modest growth in the Ethernet transceiver market for 2020. The rise of artificial intelligence applications and wider adoption of edge data centers is expected to amplify demand for high-speed optics in the coming years, according to the report.

Momentum appears to be surfacing in some optical vendors financial results as well. Optical networking vendor ADVA showed a steady improvement in the second quarter of 2020, according to preliminary figures released this week.

The company's revenues grew 8.9% year over year to $165.7 million in the second quarter. The optical vendor also substantially reduced its debt, which fell 34% year over year to $51.3 million, down from $77.8 million during the same period in 2019.

ADVA credits much of its success during the quarter on cost improvement measures taken in 2019. While ADVA's financial situation is looking up, there remains a high degree of market uncertainty due to the ongoing pandemic. Due to this, the company is withholding new guidance for the remainder of 2020.

COVID-19 doesn't appear to be impacting the pace of long-haul deployments and trials either. Infinera this week announced European network provider GÉANT deployed the company's 600 Gb/s-capable optics as part of a European Union-funded project to support research and education efforts across the continent.

Italy-based service provider Sparkle announced a major upgrade to a sub-sea cable connecting data centers in Chile to the United States using Ciena's WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics. The upgrade will enable 450 Gb/s of capacity per channel across the 10,476 kilometer-long cable.

The announcement comes just a week after Ciena claimed Vodafone had completed the first 800 Gb/s deployment in New Zealand to connect its data centers in Auckland.

Finally, Nokia, in collaboration with Orange, announced the first trial of its fifth-generation Photonic Service Engine over a live production network.

The trial, which was conducted from Orange's Paris network node to 15 points of presence, allows for 400 Gb/s services to be delivered anywhere in Europe, the companies said. During the trial, Nokia was able to achieve 400 Gb/s service at up to 3,400 kilometers and bit rates of up to 600 Gb/s over paths longer than 1,000 kilometers.