Telstra Big Pond subscribers will be the first customers of a new 300-seat contact centre which opened in Queensland today.

The $2.6 million Gold Coast centre will employ 265 agents for business process outsourcer Stella, and will support sister Queensland sites in Brisbane and Robina.

The move to outsourcing follows Telstra's high profile closures of 13 call centres, including Brisbane, and its desire to terminate 12,000 jobs by 2010.

The telco will cull its 17 technical support centres to four sites in Townsville, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth with the biggest loses in Brisbane, Adelaide and Wollongong which will suffer 957 job cuts.

Stellar Asia Pacific CEO John Hollingsworth said the Queensland site was chose to recruit untapped talent.

"We chose Queensland for our new centre to give us the ability to recruit high calibre talent," Hollingsworth said.

"We have a history of supporting regional communities and have invested more than $2.6 million in the centre's infrastructure, staff facilities and technology."

The company has its head offices in Sydney and Melbourne and operates eight other call centres across Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, with a further 10 based overseas.

Stellar customers include Telstra, Simply Energy, Sony Computer Entertainment and Hutchison Telecoms.