LONDON (Bloomberg) -- Bermuda-based Global Crossing Ltd., which lays fibre-optic cables under the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, said it will build a $700 million high capacity fibre-optic network linking 18 European cities to the US, Asia and Latin America.

The company said construction of the 7,200 kilometre network will begin this month and will begin operating in the fourth quarter of 1999. Ninety percent of Europe's data and voice communication travels through the 18 cities it will connect, including London, Paris, Frankfurt and Milan.

The network is the second part of a project by the company to run fibre-optic cables around the world and sell space on its network to national telecommunications carriers and Internet service providers, which have an increasing need to transmit voice, text and pictures.

"At present 90 percent of traffic is voice and ten percent is data,'' said Chief Executive Jack Scanlon in an interview. "That number is expected to flip by 2001, as Internet commerce grows pushing demand for high capacity bandwidth.'' Buying and selling goods and services over the Internet, known as electronic commerce, is expected to grow to as much $271 billion in Europe and the US by 2001, from about $6 billion this year, according to a US technology research company, Forrester Research Inc.

European "e-commerce'' is expected to generate $64 billion, less than one percent of gross domestic product for the region, compared with Internet revenues forecast at $207 billion in the US, or 2.7 percent of GDP.