[Animats]

There are lots of things right now which talk over two-way paging networks. This is called "machine to machine communication". Most messages look something like "A/C 3152 fault 00 cp1 ON cp2 OFF inside temp 72 outside temp 81". It's common to send text rather than binary so that both humans and machines can read the messages.

Millions of boring but important devices such as pumps, chillers, and fans are sending boring but useful messages like that. Traffic is low, maybe every hour or even once a day when things are normal. A fault generates an immediate message.

Power isn't a problem. Most of the devices which do this are attached to something that has far more power than a radio needs.