If you are still annoyed with AT&T raising the early termination fee prices earlier this year, then you aren’t going to like this latest bit of news at all. AT&T will now charge $200 for anyone that upgrades to a new smartphone model “early,” before their original two-year contract term is up. This feel will definitely affect those that change handsets more often than every two years.

The company previously charged $75 to upgrade early if you qualified though it has charged many iPhone 3G users the equivalent of $200 to upgrade to an iPhone 3GS after one year. In some cases, however, the company made exceptions based on how long a contract had been in effect or whether a customer had a more expensive voice and data plan. For the launch of the iPhone 4, AT&T even allowed some customers to upgrade without any fee at all. In a memo to AT&T sales staff, the company noted that the change was necessary due to the increasing prices of smartphones such as BlackBerrys and Androids. The pricing change doesn’t apply to feature phones, which still carry the $75 for early upgrades. It doesn’t apply to the iPhone, which as mentioned before, AT&T often treats as a special case.

“This change to our exception pricing is necessary to maintain our ability to provide customers with the best selection of devices,” the company wrote in the memo. As long as the consumers still expect to get smartphones for roughly $200 with carrier subsidies, the company expects to have these types of fees for the foreseeable future.

Source: TMCNet

Authors: _GadgetNews

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