March 15 (Reuters) - West African data center and

connectivity provider MainOne said on Friday that an internet

outage that hit West and Central Africa earlier this week was

caused by a break in its submarine cable system.

MainOne, which is owned by data center operator Equinix ( EQIX )

, said that an "external incident" resulted in a cut to

its cable system in the Atlantic Ocean, offshore Cote D'Ivoire

along the coast of West Africa. It ruled out human activity as a

cause.

The major internet outage affected West and Central Africa

on Thursday, with operators of multiple subsea cables reporting

failures.

"Our preliminary analysis would suggest some form of seismic

activity on the seabed resulted in a break to the cable",

MainOne said, adding it would obtain more data when the cable is

retrieved during repair.

"Given the distance from land, and the cable depth of about

3 kms (1.86 miles) at the point of fault, any kind of human

activity - ship anchors, fishing, drilling etc has been

immediately ruled out," it said.

MainOne has a presence in Nigeria, Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire,

according to its website.