Okay I am finally on WIRUlink.
So how it went down: My internet stopped working just after midnight on 1 December. Vumatel had to reconfigure the ONT and line so that it can receive a WIRUlink IP. This was done on Sunday the 3rd but for some reason the status on
https://sp.vumatel.co.za/ showed a status of "Installation Status: Auto Configuration Failed", and this was the case until I followed up for the 3rd time with Vumatel earlier this afternoon and they finally reconfigured it. A call to WIRUlink completed the activation process.
Now, the interesting thing is that throughout this process, I was still able to browse 99.9% of the internet.
I powered off the ONT on Saturday the 2nd around and went for a haircut. My wife subsequently returned to the house and powered the ONT on, as she found the internet to be (still) offline, thinking it was because the ONT was off. I came home to find her and my daughter happily browsing and streaming and I though sheesh that was prompt service from Vumatel. I tried to do a Speedtest and was repeatedly presented with the Afrihost activation page. For some reason the router was still receiving an Afrihost IP. For the past 6 days I was still using the internet as per usual; the odd site here and there presents me with the Afrihost activation page but for the most part I've had no issue browsing. When the internet does stop working (it seemed to do so every 24-hours), I simply switch off the ONT for 2 min and after it boots back up, I can access the internet again, being issued a different Afrihost IP. There is not active internet package listed in ClientZone for my profile.
It seems like Afrihost blocked by original IP issued when my service with them terminated. When I managed to get another IP, internet service resumed. Granted, the experience sometimes was not great with poor speeds on occasion but as I noted, it worked well for the most part.