  We present an upper bound for the quantum channel capacity that is both
additive and convex. Our bound can be interpreted as the capacity of a channel
for high-fidelity quantum communication when assisted by a family of channels
that have no capacity on their own. This family of assistance channels, which
we call symmetric side channels, consists of all channels mapping symmetrically
to their output and environment. The bound seems to be quite tight, and for
degradable quantum channels it coincides with the unassisted channel capacity.
Using this symmetric side channel capacity, we find new upper bounds on the
capacity of the depolarizing channel. We also briefly indicate an analogous
notion for distilling entanglement using the same class of (one-way) channels,
yielding one of the few entanglement measures that is monotonic under local
operations with one-way classical communication (1-LOCC), but not under the
more general class of local operations with classical communication (LOCC).
