Yup, I was involved in some work with that and it's just all over the place, the LTE/NB-Iot/CAT-M1 modules that do exist are expensive, unstable, have weird power requirements, no libraries, the antiquated AT command set with variations, overall yuck.
There's iridium but its slow and uber expensive.
LoRaWAN/TTN or even Sigfox is basically non-existent in the US, so you're left with bare LoRa/FSK. I think it can be done with some careful engineering.