Today the Israel PTO posted a notice that as of June 1, WIPO will no longer support the PCT-SAFE software that people need to use to file at the Israel PTO acting as PCT receiving office (RO/IL), and that henceforth they will need to prepare their application as a zip file using WIPO's ePCT portal. The notice mentions many of the advantages of using ePCT with which regular ePCT users are familiar, such as the many checks that ePCT does before one files. (Carl Oppedahl has blogged extensively about these advantages.)
But if one already needs to set up an ePCT account, and log into ePCT to prepare a zip file, why file at RO/IL? Why not just file at RO/IB instead? That way, one's filing is immediately visible in ePCT. And for most of the year, one gets an extra hour to file (due to the time zone difference between Jerusalem and Geneva). Plus, you only need to log into one account, not two.
I can think of three reasons to bother preparing a zip file using ePCT, then switching to the Israel PTO site to file the PCT: (a) the technology is such that the PCT application must first be filed in Israel; (b) for ideological reasons, one prefers paying the Israel PTO rather than the IB to serve as receiving office; (c) for practical reasons, one would rather pay the Israel PTO in shekels than pay WIPO in a foreign currency.
It will be interesting to see the use of RO/IL changes as a result of the discontinuation of PCT-SAFE. As this change will no doubt affect other ROs as well, I'm guessing that the use of RO/IB will increase following the change.