I got my Internet fixed yesterday, and I am very much ashamed to say that the fault was entirely on my side. For months I have not been able to upload anything because the connection keeps cutting off. A Virgin media mechanic came over twice but was unable to fix the problem. The third mechanic came over yesterday and diagnosed what I was unable to: the problem was between the cable model and my laptop's wifi.
I have no excuse for my lack of testing. It's something I could easily have figured out if I had run a speed test on my iPad or on my girlfriend's pc. My girlfriend told me that Internet was fine but she never showed me proof so I didn't believe her. What's worse, I didn't even troubleshoot the problem myself, which is very un-engineery of me. I could have found the cause easily but my knowledge of computers led me to believe that it couldn't possibly be the wifi. Such misplaced arrogance.
The virgin mechanic told me that sometimes foreign laptops work on different wifi channels from the cable modem, which causes problems in communication, eg. Communication just cutting off after a short while. It didn't sound very believable to me but the wifi definitely turned out to be the cause. The mechanic gave me a massively long Ethernet cable and everything just works beautifully.
I blame my own lethargy and overconfidence for not troubleshooting the problem. Had I known less about computers I would have tried more things, especially if I didn't come home from work tired every day. Not an excuse, just an explanation.
One of the most important reasons for me to have broadband Internet is so I can back up my photos to my pc in holland. Ironically, on the same day my Internet was fixed, I called home and we diagnosed my home pc to be broken beyond (remote) repair. So sad...