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Activity on Ascension was relatively quiet until the Eastern Telegraph Company (ETC) arrived in late 1899 with plans of installing an underwater cable network linking Britain to Cape Town via various island nodes.

Britain was to be connected to Ascension through the Cape Verde islands, and from there to St. Helena and on to Cape Town, so as to establish a round-about system linking the UK and South Africa.

ETC was responsible for the innovation of the first worldwide cable communications network— the “Victorian Internet”—which by 1900 accounted for roughly 100,000 miles of submarine cables.

ASCENSION ISLAND AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR
http://www.davidfmitchell.com/uploads/4/3/4/0/43400967/ascension_island_and_the_second_world_war_.pdf

“This is one of the strangest places on the face of the earth.” – Captain William Burnett, Ascension Island Commandant, 1858

ASCENSION ISLAND AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR
http://www.davidfmitchell.com/uploads/4/3/4/0/43400967/ascension_island_and_the_second_world_war_.pdf

The rugged island is barren in many places, and has no indigenous human population. Instead the residents of the island are there because of Ascension’s main industry: communications.

The island has a long history as a communications hub for telephone and radio communications and as a base for satellite tracking stations, including a NASA station built in the 1960s that no longer operates. The European Space Agency operates a tracking station for its Ariane spacecrafts on the eastern side of the island.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/3327/ascension-island

There are 818 characters in my post above. 👆
8+1+8=17=Q

Coincidence?