I would cast my vote for "unnecessary" - and I'd also like to know which provider you use, gahz.
In my experience using SSL NNTP servers over the last 4 or 5 years I've occasionally noticed significantly slower speed (and an irregular bandwidth graph) compared to the provider's non-SSL server. Adding more connections always helped, but often even that was not enough to achieve full speed. (I never bothered to report the problem since I knew that running SSL puts a high load on their servers, and figured that everyone else was probably affected as well)
Unless I was on a public WI-FI, I'd usually just use the provider's non-SSL server as a solution. But while SSL speed problems were quite common a few years ago on budget providers that offered free SSL like Usenetserver, it seems it's rarely an issue these days.
Since you say your ISP doesn't throttle NNTP and you're not on an open wireless network, then I can't see any compelling reason to use SSL for uploading. (assuming you don't live in a speech-restrictive country like Iran or China and you're posting naughty stuff) A lot of people will disagree with me whenever I say that SSL is unneccessary (and a waste of server resources) for most typical home users, but like USPs that offer 50+ connections, I would agree that SSL can be a godsend to the rare few who actually require it.
