U.S. small businesses can soon take advantage of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phone service on Microsoft Response Point phone systems to improve their business communications. Today at the third annual Microsoft Small Business Summit, Microsoft Corp. announced it will release a feature update, Service Pack 1 (SP1), to its Microsoft Response Point phone system software this summer, available free via a simple download.

�Small businesses rely heavily on the phone to communicate with customers and want a solution that allows them to reliably reach as many customers as possible at a low cost,� said Xuedong Huang, general manager for Response Point at Microsoft. �Response Point SP1 will make it easy to transition from traditional analog service to the promise of digital voice services.�

Response Point SP1 will enable small businesses to easily supplement their existing phone service with VoIP services. As customers become more comfortable with the reliability and quality of service offered by VoIP, they can seamlessly move from analog to VoIP without needing telephony expertise.