  The robustness of multipartite entanglement of systems undergoing decoherence
is of central importance to the area of quantum information. Its
characterization depends however on the measure used to quantify entanglement
and on how one partitions the system. Here we show that the unambiguous
assessment of the robustness of multipartite entanglement is obtained by
considering the loss of functionality in terms of two communication tasks,
namely the splitting of information between many parties and the teleportation
of states.
