We introduce potential capacities of quantum channels in an operational way and provide upper bounds for these quantities, which quantify the ultimate limit of usefulness of a channel for a given task in the best possible context. Unfortunately, except for a few isolated cases, potential capacities seem to be as hard to compute as their "plain" analogues. We thus study upper bounds on some potential capacities: For the classical capacity, we give an upper bound in terms of the entanglement of formation. To establish a bound for the quantum and private capacity, we first "lift" the channel to a Hadamard channel and then prove that the quantum and private capacity of a Hadamard channel is strongly additive, implying that for these channels, potential and plain capacity are equal. Employing these upper bounds we show that if a channel is noisy, however close it is to the noiseless channel, then it cannot be activated into the noiseless channel by any other contextual channel; this conclusion holds for all the three capacities. We also discuss the so-called environment-assisted quantum capacity, because we are able to characterize its "potential" version.

10 pages, IEEE style; minor changes, references added; accepted for publication in EEE Trans Inf. Theory