Effective August 21 2009, Rogers is once again amending their Hardware Upgrade policy.

The new policy now states that you can only get a hardware upgrade after 24 months (used to be 12 months). The new policy affects all consumer accounts (business accounts seem unaffected) and all devices (smartphones and regular phones).

I am going to break this post down into four sections:

1.) The Background Info

2.) Rogers Hardware Upgrade Policy Before March 17 2009 (Old Policy)

3.) Rogers Hardware Upgrade Policy On Or After March 17 2009 (New Policy)

4.) Rogers Hardware Upgrade Policy On Or After August 21 2009 (Another New Policy) (The New Change)

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1.) The Background Info

With Rogers, you will need to sign up on a 3-year contract to be eligible to upgrade or activate an HTC device and then choose an available voice or voice and data plan. To be eligible for the contract promotional pricing for the HTC device, you must have a 3 year voice and data plan (data plan not required for non-smartphones).

2.) Rogers Hardware Upgrade Policy Before March 17 2009 (Old Policy)

Before March 17 2009, the hardware upgrade policy was that you could upgrade to ANY phone as soon as you have reached the 12 month (1 year) mark in your contract since your last upgrade/activation. If you opted for that, you pay a premium for the device because you would be only one year into the contract term. So for example, the price of upgrading to the HTC Dream under the old policy would look like this after 1 year into your contract term since your last upgrade/activation (prices assume 3 year voice/data plan).

• HTC Dream – $179 or more (promo price $79)

The reason you pay $100 or more is because you are only 1 year into your contract term and your accumulated discounts are not high enough to enable promotional pricing.

Once you reached the 2 year mark in your contract since your last upgrade/activation, under the old policy, promotional pricing is usually granted and looks like this (prices assume 3 year voice/data plan):

• HTC Dream – $79 or less

3.) Rogers Hardware Upgrade Policy On Or After March 17 2009 (New Policy)

On March 17 2009 Rogers brought in a new policy that essentially said that if you have a Smartphone (Blackberry, iPhone, etc) on your account, you will not be able to upgrade to another Smartphone until you reach the 24 month (2 years) mark in your contract from your last upgrade/activation.

However, after 12 months in your contract from your last upgrade/activation, you may upgrade to a REGULAR CONSUMER phone (Nokia 5310, Nokia 6086, etc).

In summary, dumbphones are every 12 months, smartphones every 24 months.

Eligibility

New Rogers Customers

If you are a TOTALLY brand new customer to Rogers, once you have your 3 year contract plan chosen, the prices below are for NEW customers (prices assume 3 year voice/data plan):

• HTC Dream – $79
• HTC Magic – $79

The next part is going to be confusing, so read carefully.

Current Rogers Customers using Smartphone Devices

If you are an existing Rogers customer and are going to be less than two years into your contract by the time you want a hardware upgrade, then a few things happen here.

According to the new upgrade policy (March 17 2009 and onward), if you currently have a Smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, etc) registered on your account, even if you did not buy it from Rogers but it is registered on your account, then you will NOT be able to upgrade to another Smartphone until you have reached the 24 month (2 year) mark in your contract since your last upgrade/activation.

At that time, 2 years in, your pricing will look like this (prices assume 3 year voice/data plan):

• HTC Dream – $79
• HTC Magic – $79

In other words, everyone that got the HTC Dream on June 2, 2009, your next Smartphone upgrade will be available June 2, 2011, according to this upgrade policy.

However, do understand that when Rogers say you are “eligible” to upgrade, upgrading to a new smartphone (HTC Magic) may not actually be the case. You may be “eligible” to upgrade, but you may be only eligible for a non-smartphone, for example.

Current Rogers Customers using non-Smartphone Devices

If you are an existing Rogers customer and are going to be more than one year but less two years into your contract by the time you want a hardware upgrade, then a few things happen here.

If you are an existing Rogers customer and are not using a smartphone device or a smartphone device is not registered on your account, you may upgrade to the HTC Dream/Magic (or other device) so long as your account has reached atleast its 12 month mark since your last activation/upgrade.

At that time, 1 year in, your pricing will look like this:

• HTC Dream – $179
• HTC Magic – $179

Note that the longer you wait and hold off on the upgrade, the better your price will become. So waiting until 2 years into the contract instead of 1 year will likely lower the price to promotional pricing of $7 for the HTC Dream/Magic.

Summary Of Rogers Hardware Upgrade Policy On Or After March 17 2009 (New Policy)

Technicalities aside, this hardware upgrade policy essentially only affected current customers that were using any type of Smartphone device.

You used to be able to get any device every 12 months, but on March 17 2009, it changed to every 24 months for smartphones.

The policy stayed the same at 12 months for regular, non-smartphone devices.

4.) Rogers Hardware Upgrade Policy On Or After August 21 2009 (Another New Policy) (The New Change)

Now comes the new change effective August 21 2009.

The new policy now states that you can only get a hardware upgrade after 24 months. The new policy affects all consumer accounts (business accounts seem unaffected) and all devices (smartphones and regular phones).

If you read above, the original upgrade policy (before March 17 2009) stated that you could get any device as long as you were at or past the 12 month mark into your contract.

The next policy revision (on March 17 2009) indicated that you could still get any device as long as you were at or past the 12 month mark into your contract. However if you had a smartphone on your account, you must wait until the 24 month mark (instead of 12) in your contract in order to upgrade to another smartphone. Consumer (dumbphone) devices were still available on or after the 12 month mark in your contract.

The latest policy revision (August 21 2009) indicates that ALL consumer accounts must wait until the 24 month mark in your contract in order to get ANY device (consumer or data device).

Things Have Not Changed For Current Smartphone Owners

This new policy is not news to current smartphone owners (HTC Dream/Magic), as current smartphone owners must still wait 24 months before upgrading to a new smartphone ever since the original March 17 2009 policy revision.

In other words, people who got the HTC Dream on June 2 2009, your next upgrade is June 2 2011. This is the same policy that all smartphone owners are under.

So what does this mean for a new smartphones that are released in in the future? Well, in short, it means you cannot upgrade to them until 2011 or two years since your last upgrade/activation.

News To Prospective and Non-Smartphone Owners

This new policy however is news to everyone else that either does not own a smartphone or is planning on getting a smartphone.

The people this is going to affect most are the people that are not able to upgrade yet or are almost at their upgrade date. Now these people cannot upgrade and must wait until the 24 month mark is reached in their contract since their last upgrade/activation.

So if you have a consumer (dumbphone) device right now, your eligible upgrade date, effective August 21 2009, just turned into 2 years from your last upgrade/activation. If you have a data (smartphone) device and wanted to switch to a consumer (dumbphone) device for whatever reason, you must also now wait 24 months instead of the 12 months that was originally required for current smartphone owners.

Summary Of Rogers Hardware Upgrade Policy On Or After August 21 2009 (New Policy)

In summary, it is now a requirement to have a minimum of 24 months tenure since your last upgrade/activation to get any device (smartphone or dumbphone) in a hardware upgrade.

The original upgrade policy (before March 17 2009) required a minimum of 12 months of tenure since your last upgrade/activation to get any device (smartphone or dumbphone) in a hardware upgrade.

The next policy revision (on March 17 2009) required a minimum of 12 months of tenure since your last upgrade/activation to get any consumer (dumbphone) device in a hardware upgrade. For data (smartphone) devices in a hardware upgrade, a minimum of 24 months of tenure since your last upgrade/activation was required.

Now, effective August 21 2009, ALL consumer accounts must wait until the 24 month mark in their contract in order to get ANY device (consumer or data device). As I mentioned earlier, this does not affect current smartphone owners much (you just have to wait 24 months to upgrade to consumer devices as well if you were planning to switch from smartphone to dumbphone), but it sure does affect prospective smartphone and non-smartphone owners, as they now must wait two years to upgrade instead of 1 year.