> How on earth can you say that there is no such thing as 
> channel partners
> anymore when just today(Friday) I was talking with channel 
> partner support
> that's how they identified themselves and moreover I had to 
> send email to
> cp§melbourneit.com.au to have a request escalated please send 
> the email to
> channel partners § melbourne it thank you very much.

The term channel partner has been used for sometime by sales and marketing,
when recruiting resellers.  It is a term commonly used on websites in the IT
industry to refer to reselling opportunities.

It is not a term appropriate for marketing directly to end-users (who are
generally not from the IT industry and aren't familiar with the terminology)
via paper mail-outs.  Many end-usrs in Australia infer a different meaning
from "partner".  There are only a few companies that I am aware of that use
the term in such mass-marketing.

As the term "channel partner" has caused part of the confusion amongst
registrants with regard to renewal notices, we are asking resellers not to
use the term in their marketing.
The legal agreement between Melbourne IT and resellers does not use the term
to my knowledge.  My comments were originally in relation to the use of the
term in a renewal notice.

We are progressively removing the term from our public websites and by our
staff.  It takes awhile to do such changes.  e.g Look at how long it took
Telstra to remove the term "Telecom Australia" from all material.  The term
should not currently be visible to the general public, but some of our web
pages that are only accessible to resellers are likely to still have the
term in some places.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin