[AusNOG] Connecting a rural Community

[Andrew McN]

I'm looking at options for improving the connectivity of a rural
community about 90 minutes out of Melbourne.  I know a bit about server
environments in a data center, but I don't know much about things like
fibre, trenching, microwave links, or dealing with backhaul providers.
So I'm looking for input about what sort of technologies I should be
looking at, what costs I should expect, and maybe who might be able to
help me.

* The community comprises 30 households and assorted work from home
businesses on a single property on a mountain top.
* Power is off-grid solar.  There's excellent local skills for anything
needed there.
* There's phone lines, but ADSL and ISDN are not available.
* There's an Optus Cell tower just 100m or so off the property.
* There's good line of sight over a large area of populated land. with
other Cell towers and the like.  None of this however is covered by any
NBN roll-out either current or planned.
* Fire risk is significant.

The houses are arranged in 6 clusters, each of which has a fire shelter.
 I'm thinking, perhaps naively,  it would be good to run fibre to each
fire shelter, preferably underground, and then use above ground ethernet
from there to the houses.  That would mean about 3km of underground
cables.  I think the ground is sandy loam in most parts, but there's
some bits where forested bits where tree roots might be an issue.  What
do I need to know to work out likely costs here?  Is it just a cable
which needs to go underground, or is some sort of conduit needed?

What about the uplink?  Is Optus likely to be approachable about a fibre
link right to their tower?  Is it a doable thing to arrange a private
microwave link?  Who might I be looking to link to?  Costs?

Any particular companies I should be aware of for setting this sort of
thing up?

Any help much appreciated.

Regards,
Andrew