The Active Directory service was finally activated on my Office 365 tenant today.
However it took 10 days and my experience with support was terrible. It took too long to escalate the issue. I heard from an array of different people none of which had any information to share whatsoever except to repeat the problem back to me. Even the way in which the problem has suddenly been solved with no communication or explanation is disappointing. It does not fill me with confidence anyway.
If there was a service interruption of some kind surely Microsoft have learned by now that it is better to be upfront and honest rather than try to hide the issue and simply buy time with pointless support communication.
Thank you to Bourne and others here for sharing their experience.