i wouldnt need more than 1MBit to ssh into my servers comfortably, and pull directions to the nearest "full power downlink" if i want to listen to music while i work or something

Have you looked into AWS Ground Station? I don’t know if it’s economical, or has enough locations for 24/7 access, but it might be better than once an orbit.

All ground station as a service are limited by radio licensing, you need to apply for transmit license to the country that the groundstation is located to legally transmit to your cubesat. Its not as easy as spinning up an EC2 instance

Some regulation horror: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/space/Pages/API.aspx . Worst case you need to wait 7 years! to get your radio license

Compare this to a 4G modem / smartphone, its amazing that you don't need to file spectrum license to another country version of FCC everytime you travel. It. Just. Worked.

That sounds super fascinating. Can you tell us more about your cubesat?

There's IDRS that does this for satellites.

At first I thought you misspelled TDRSS but then I found out that IDRS is a thing: https://www.idrsspace.com/

Its too big and power hungry to fit inside 10x20x30 cm cubesat though :( More reason to go bigger