Former Telstra boss Sol Trujillo may be retired, but he can’t shake his habit of giving the Aussie govt the bash.

Tesltra’s new chief executive, New Zealander David Thodey, may be trying to build bridges with the Australian government.

But his predecessor is still trying to pull them down.

Sol Trujillo (above) has ended his career as Telstra chief executive with a premature resignation, and a secret plane ride out of the country. New Zealander David Thodey – brother of one-time BNZ chief executive Peter Thodey – has taken the reins at Australia’s dominant telco.

The ACCC has filed suit against Telstra for refusing rivals’ access to its copper network, sending its shares to a fresh all-time low.

And just to make sure the company is really, really, really out of the running for the National Broadband Network, a senior Telstra employee mocks Communications & IT Minister Stephen Conroy on Twitter.

A suit by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), filed in a Melbourne Federal Court this afternoon, alleges that Telstra refused to let rivals access seven of its phone exchanges.

Telstra has announced the resignation of its chief executive, Sol Trujillo - a move that could end its Mexican stand-off with the Australian government over the national broadband network.

No successor was announced.

American ex-pat Mr Trujillo will leave the company on June 30, the fourth anniversary of his arrival in Australia to became head of Telstra in July 2005.

Following the Australian government's shock exclusion of Telstra (TLS) from participating in the National Broadband Network process, the telco's chief executive Sol Trujillo has sent a letter to shareholders this morning aiming to calm their fears.

After suffering only moderate damage on the ASX most of yesterday, Telstra’s shares crashed at the close to record the company's biggest one-day fall since its 1997 float.

The collapse came as Communications Minister Stephen Conroy took a sledgehammer to the company's spin machine, saying the telco has sidelined itself for a decade by "excluding itself" from the National Broadband Network. Rivals sniff a historic chance to break Telstra's near-monopoly.