Yes that was always my understanding too. The reality for Foxtel is that unless they can keep that fact quiet (which they appear to be trying to do), they will face an avalanche of people like me expecting a free upgrade. My original plan was to simply wait until they were forced to upgrade me until I heard other people were being upgraded for free. Make no mistake, they want people to pay for the upgrade if they can cajole them in the interim and I always assumed that the introduction of 4K TV was their weapon of choice. The word is getting out now so I think they will have a job on their hands to get people to pay.
As for Kayo, I considered that as an option but from what I'm reading it has some serious drawbacks like the lack of an integrated electronic program guide or Samsung Smart TV App and the inability to record programs. For me those few things made it a no go zone for now. That said, the fact that they are upgrading me without the need for me to recontract (as far as I know), means that if Kayo ever becomes a palatable option I will be able to cancel my subscription to foxtel at any time without penalty and that was what I was hoping for. I'm assuming that if I went to Telstra or Foxtel and simply asked for the upgrade, I would be forced to recontract for at least 12 months.
The other thing on my mind was my impending downgrade to NBN. I currently have cable internet which is fairly fast and my research suggests that Telstra along with a number of other ISP's under-provision their NBN bandwidth to the extent that they will not even be able to maintain my current internet speed. You can check out ISP's on Whirlpool. My research suggests that there are one or two ISP's out there who provision their offerings with adequate bandwidth and unless Telstra change their policies, I had planned to cancel my internet with Telstra and go to a better provisioned ISP. Once again, because they are upgrading me without the need to recontract, I will be free to contract with any ISP before my cable offering is withdrawn in August 2019.
It's all looking like working out pretty much as I'd hoped... so far!