Pan-African telecoms operator Seacom says it has scheduled routine maintenance on its subsea cable system in the Red Sea for later this month, which could cause higher latency in SA.

"The maintenance will begin at 3am on 19 January and end at 1am on 23 January," the group said in a statement to customers.

Seacom says it will route traffic over its West Coast transmission links and to its Asia gateways during the maintenance period.

"This rerouting of data traffic could result in higher latency for South African Internet users."