Genuinely curious - what would be a good use for a generic cubesat with average-ish components, like cameras, sensors, radios, etc. - nothing custom made and overly specialized? Especially considering the cost.
I would guess you'd have a relay for any data you want transferred from non-connected devices/locations, e.g. farm equipment, wind turbines, ships, etc. Also, a client-to-space-to-EC2-only VPN in a I-am-my-own-satellite ISP may have benefits. Unsure whether by "average-ish" you meant the ability to broadcast/receive ground data.
Is it really cost effective to roll your own for that kind of thing? I would have thought there were enough off the shelf satellite/m2m solutions for remote connectivity, eg https://www.orbcomm.com/en/networks/satellite
> Is it really cost effective to roll your own for that kind of thing?
Nope, hence leveraging Amazon et al. I would consider the AWS "above the cloud" offering (as I've now dubbed it) to essentially be the same commoditized thing as what you linked. An extraterrestrial CDN with edge compute if you will.
