Between April and June, the optical equipment market saw its best quarter in the last four years, according to data released today by Ovum-RHK.

Fiber access deployments, along with metro and backbone network upgrades, drove wireline spending higher than expected in the second quarter. This is the same quarter which delivered 34% growth in the number of fiber-to-the-home subscribers in the U.S. as well as first-ever profits for ten-year-old optical equipment vendor Avici Systems.

And although that quarter is over, the photons should keep on flowin’. In a separate release today, Ovum-RHK pointed out that, while carriers have been spending a lot on edge gear lately, 40-Gb/s upgrades expected next year will boost further spending on core networks.

“2007 is where the market for 40 Gb/s should really kick,” Nortel Networks’ Philippe Morin told me late last year, when the company was boasting its best optical quarter since 2003.

For optical equipment vendors, it will be a welcome change from the kind of kicking they’ve felt in recent years.

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