Being a techie freak, I would love to upgrade my smartphone every year, but being a poor blog writer, I cannot always afford to follow my dreams. However, the carriers have started offering early upgrade programs – T-Mobile started this trend in the U.S. with their ‘JUMP!’ program, and were soon followed by Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. It looks like the Canadian carriers are following our carriers lead – Rogers’ even named their upgrade plan, Rogers ‘Next,’ the same as AT&T.
This early upgrade program will be coming in March and is available to both new and existing subscribers as long as they are willing sign a two-year contract and purchase a LTE-enabled, and what they call a “premium” device. Most flagship devices from Apple, BlackBerry, Android, or Windows Phone will make the cut. After twelve months, the customer is allowed to trade-in their phone in exchange for a brand new device.
The Rogers Next program requires no money down with smartphones that are valued up to a subsidized pricing of $250. You are still able to use this program for more expensive devices, however, if the two-year subsidized price is greater than $250 the customer must pay the difference. For example, if you want to purchase a subsidized smartphone for $329.99 on a two-year contract, you would pay the additional $79.99 at the time of your upgrade.
Rogers Website explains how it works:
When you upgrade to a new device or join Rogers as a new customer, you have the option to subscribe to the Rogers Next program for a monthly fee of $24.99. Or choose the $29.99 option which includes Rogers Device Protection Premium. This service, which helps protect you from device damage (and loss and theft in some provinces), retails for up to $11.99 per month…
Then after 12 months, you trade in your current device in good working order for a new smartphone of your choice that has a subsidized price of up to $250…
You would pay $0 down for the new device on select new two-year plans, and your remaining FLEXtab balance and connection fees are waived…
You then have the option to continue your enrolment in Rogers Next to get another new device in 12 months…
The chart below was done by Rogers so a customer could see the difference in cost between a one-year upgrade using Rogers Next program or if they were on the regular two-year contract.
