How can I activate a Service outside Activity corr

I am trying to build an app that will rely on a Webservice to work. To make it, I decided to follow the Model-View-ViewModel architecture together with the Repository pattern. I try to make this architecture inspired by the guidelines shown in Guide to App architecture, from Android Developer's Official Site.

I use OkHttp library to consume the WebService, and Room for the phone's database.

I made some testing to see if the app obtained succesfully the Data through the Webservice, from inside the Main Activity, and it worked; the App received successfully the Data.

ServiceConnection connection = new ServiceConnection() {

    @Override
    public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName name) {
        connected = false;
        Log.i("MainActivity", "MyWebService DISconnected successfully.");
    }

    @Override
    public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName name, IBinder service) {
        myweb_service = ((MyWebService.LocalBinder)service).getService();
        connected = true;
        Log.i("MainActivity", "MyWebService connected successfully.");
    }
};

void doBindMyWebService() {
    if (bindService(new Intent(this, MyWebService.class),
            connection, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE))
    {
        mShouldUnbind = true;
    }
    else {
        Log.e("MainActivity", "ERROR --> Service instance doesn't exist, or this Client doesn't have permission to access.");
    }
}

void doUnbindMyWebService() {
    if (mShouldUnbind) {
        unbindService(connection);
    }
}

doBindMyWebService();

/* I am not trying to extract this method at all; I just included it for
 * the sake of completeness
 */
@Override
protected void onDestroy() {
    super.onDestroy();
    doUnbindMyWebService();
}

Now, in order to stick to the chosen architecture, I am trying to move the code that creates the ServiceConnection in the Main Activity, outside the Activity, in order to decouple it from View logic. To do so, I tried wrapping the code that makes the ServiceConnection and binds it into a new class for handling Services. While extracting the code and tried to engage it with the Repository class, the next question came out: is it neccesary binding the Service in order to make it work, and retrieve data from it, or instead, I can do so without binding it at all? (For the record: this is not the question itself; I'm just pointing out what I was thinking while making the code)

Please notice that I am aware that I could just pass some context (the MainActivity's context or the Application context, for example) to the classes' constructors and store it in some property, but this is indeed what I am trying to avoid doing in order to prevent memory leaks. Long story short:

The above code works within MainActivity
I am trying to activate Services outside the Activity class, so I made a dedicated class to handle Services within it. I called this class "RemoteDataSource"
I am trying to make the Repository class to retrieve the data from the Service, once the Service has completed the HTTP call and received the response.
I want MyWebService to keep running, even if there isn't any Activity instanced.
Trying to bind the Service to some context under these conditions seems pointless, because it might lead to memory leaks.
It seems that calling onStartCommand isn't enough to make it run the Service.

Here's the code of MyWebService:

package com.example.myapp;

import android.app.Service;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Binder;
import android.os.IBinder;
import android.support.annotation.Nullable;
import android.util.Log;

import com.example.myapp.model.MyDataModel;

import org.json.JSONArray;
import org.json.JSONException;
import org.json.JSONObject;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;

import okhttp3.Call;
import okhttp3.Callback;
import okhttp3.OkHttpClient;
import okhttp3.Request;
import okhttp3.Response;

public class MyWebService extends Service {
    private String url= "https://someserver.here/api/data/read.php";
    private String response = "";
    private JSONArray response_jsonarray;
    private boolean running = false;

    final static int MESSAGE = 1;

    private final IBinder mBinder = new LocalBinder();

    public boolean isRunning() {
        return this.running;
    }

    public class LocalBinder extends Binder {
        MyWebService getService() {
            return MyWebService.this;
        }
    }

    public String getResponse() {
        if (!running) return null;
        return this.response;
    }

    public JSONArray getResponseAsJsonArray() {
        if (!running) return null;
        return this.response_jsonarray;
    }

    public List<MyDataModel> getResponseAsObject() {
        if (!running) return null;

        ArrayList<MyDataModel> child_nodes = new ArrayList<MyDataModel>();

        for (int i = 0; i < this.response_jsonarray.length(); i++) {
            try {
                JSONObject parent_obj = this.response_jsonarray.getJSONObject(i);
                long parent_id = parent_obj.getLong("id_parent");
                short type_id = (short)parent_obj.getInt("type");
                short status_id = (short)parent_obj.getInt("status_id");

                JSONObject childs_list = parent_obj.getJSONObject("childs");
                Iterator<String> iter_childs = childs_list.keys();
                while (iter_childs.hasNext()) {
                    JSONObject child_obj = childs_list.getJSONObject(iter_child.next());

                    long i_id = child_obj.getLong("id");
                    String i_name = child_obj.getString("name");
                    double i_lat = child_obj.getDouble("lat");
                    double i_long = child_obj.getDouble("long");
                    short i_order = (short)child_obj.getInt("order");

                    MyDataModel i_child = new MyDataModel(i_id, i_name, i_lat, i_long, 0, 0, type_id, status_id, 0, parent_id, i_order);
                    child_nodes.add(i_child);
                }
            } catch (JSONException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
        return child_nodes;
    }

    /*
     * SERVICE LIFECYCLE
     */
    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        Log.i("MyWebService", "OnCreate TRIGGERED");

        OkHttpClient client = new OkHttpClient();

        Request request = new Request.Builder()
                .url(url)
                .build();

        client.newCall(request).enqueue(new Callback() {
            @Override
            public void onFailure(Call call, IOException e) {
                Log.e("MyWebService", "ERROR --> " + e.getMessage());
                e.printStackTrace();
                call.cancel();
            }

            @Override
            public void onResponse(Call call, Response response) throws IOException {
                Log.i("MyWebService", "GOOD -> Response received! :-)");

                final String myResponse = response.body().string();
                response = myResponse;
                try {
                    response_jsonarray = new JSONArray(response);
                } catch (JSONException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        });
        this.running = true;

        super.onCreate();
    }

    @Override
    public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
        super.onStartCommand(intent, flags, startId);
        Log.i("MyWebService", "OnStartCommand TRIGGERED");
        return START_STICKY;
    }

    @Override
    public void onDestroy() {
        super.onDestroy();
    }

    @Nullable
    @Override
    public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) {
        Log.i("MyWebService", "OnBind TRIGGERED");
        return mBinder;
    }
}

And here, the code of the class i called "RemoteDataSource":

package com.example.myapp;

import android.content.ComponentName;
import android.content.Context;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.content.ServiceConnection;
import android.os.IBinder;
import android.util.Log;

public class RemoteDataSource {
    private boolean connected;
    private boolean mShouldUnbind;
    private MyWebService mWebService;

    private final int INTENT_WEBSERVICE = 1;

    public boolean isConnected() {
        return this.connected;
    }

    public boolean isBound() {
        return this.mShouldUnbind;
    }

    public ServiceConnection getConnection() {
        return this.connection;
    }

    private ServiceConnection connection;

    public MyWebService getMyWebService() {
        return this.mWebService;
    }

    public RemoteDataSource() {
        this.connection = new ServiceConnection() {

            @Override
            public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName name) {
                connected = false;
                Log.i("RemoteDataSource", "MyWebService DISconnected successfully");
            }

            @Override
            public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName name, IBinder service) {
                mWebService = ((MyWebService.LocalBinder) service).getService();
                connected = true;
                Log.i("RemoteDataSource", "MyWebService connected successfully");
            }
        };
    }

    public boolean isRunning() {
        if (this.mWebService == null) return false;
        return this.mWebService.isRunning();
    }

    public void prepareWebService() {
        //TODO -> Consider this empty method as a symbol of what I am trying to achieve
    }

    public void startMyWebService() {
        this.mWebService.onStartCommand(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SYNC), 0, INTENT_WEBSERVICE);
    }

    public void stopMyWebService() {
        this.mWebService.stopSelf();
    }

    public void doBindMyWebService (Context context) {
        if (context.bindService(new Intent(context, MyWebService.class),
                this.connection, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE)) {
            this.mShouldUnbind = true;
        } else {
            Log.e("RemoteDataSource", "ERROR --> Service instance doesn't exist, or this Client doesn't have permission to access.");
        }
    }

    public void doUnbindMyWebService (Context context) {
        if (this.mShouldUnbind) {
            context.unbindService(connection);
        }
    }
}

And here is some piece of my Repository class' constructor:

public Repository(Application application) {
    AppDatabase db = AppDatabase.getDatabase(application);
    mParentDao = db.parentDao();
    mMyDataModelDao = db.myDataModelDao();

    mRemoteDataSource = new RemoteDataSource();

    /* XXX It was a bad idea, it gets stuck in an infinite loop; I just had to try anyway
     *     The point is, if I don't wait until MyWebService has made it's work,
     *       the app crashes with NullPointerException (or it seems so, at least)
     */
    while (!mRemoteDataSource.isRunning()) { continue; }

    mRemoteDataSource.startMyWebService();

    // [...]
}

My objective at this point is to handle this MyWebService of mine from the RemoteDataSource class, avoiding binding it to a context. The WebService might deserve a dedicated Thread, but I am still a noob with threads; so i'd rather keep it simple until I see it working; later I will worry about improving performance.

In any case, I think I am too confused about how should I start the Service (please notice that I am not too familiar with Services and the way to handle them). Is the way I tried to handle the service wrong? If it is, what am I overlooking? What should I have in mind in order to de-couple MyWebService from the View logic?