It appears that HTC may have pushed the release of the Android 2.1 upgrade for the HTC Hero to late March. The news comes from Irish carrier Meteor where a company representative was in contact with HTC. At first, it appeared that the upgrade would be only to Android 2.0:
We’ve been in contact with HTC and they have said that version 2.0 will be available in and around March of this year. HTC sense UI will be tightly integrated with Android 2.0, as with other versions of the software. Because of this new versions of the software take a while to develop. As for 2.1 this would also need to be developed and there is no update on this.
Further follow-up by Meteor then confirmed that the upgrade would be to Android 2.1 and that HTC was hoping to have it by the end of March (as opposed to mid-February as suggested by other rumours).
Source: Electronista