Part of the activities of the ICT EU Network of Excellence “Building the future Optical Network in Europe”(BONE) project is the development of the European Roadmap on Optical Networking in the context of the“Network of the Future”. This paper presents a summary of the views of the BONE consortium as they weredeveloped in the framework of the Roadmap activity. The methodology followed in the development of theBONE Roadmap was firstly to identify and analyse the status of broadband access penetration as well as theavailability of specific network and IT technologies in various European countries. The data collected were thenprocessed and translated into the traffic volume (distributed across different European countries) that a Pan-European network would need to support. This information is then used as the basis of a WDM optical networkdimensioning exercise performed with the aim of identifying the scale of the required optical network.In addition, based on estimations regarding the evolution of broadband access technologies and the degree ofbroadband penetration and network services and applications, extrapolations regarding the growth of traffic to besupported by the European Network of the Future were made in a systematic manner. These were also used todimension and understand the requirements of the European Network of the Future. This paper presents therelevant results and also provides a discussion on the BONE consortium views on the Network of the Futurefrom an architectural and technology perspective and an outlook of the relevant key research challenges andpossible solutions.