abstract: We explore the capability of spin-12 chains to act as quantum channels for both teleportation and transfer of qubits. The recent studies on the emergence of long-distance entanglement in low-dimensional systems Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 247206 (2006) allow to attain high communication fidelities between distant particles. An investigation of protocols of teleportation and state transfer is presented, in the realistic situation where temperature is included. Basing our setup on antiferromagnetic rotational invariant systems, both teleportation and transfer are represented by a purely depolarizing channel. We propose a scheme where channel fidelity close to one can be achieved on very long chains at moderately small temperature.