I suspect you'll still need power if you want to ham it up with any kind of range, though. Transmission range is not that great without some meaty wattage into a raised antenna. Small ones are like 5 miles?

I'm not sure at what point an Iridium with a 10 minutes /mo plan starts to make sense from a peace of mind perspective

yeah any real solution like that is dependent on the generator and battery setup we've had on the shopping list for the last couple years