Communicators have a certain number of simulaneous transmit and receive lines based on TL. They have transmit lines equal to TL and receive lines equal to the square of the TL. The number of lines used by a particular type of communication channel varies as shown.
 

Channel	Total lines	Transmit	Receive
voice simplex	1	1/2	1/2
voice duplex	2	1	1
image(includes voice)	4	2	2
data	2	1	1
computer control	4	2	2

    A number of different types of channels are in use in the Imperium. Listed below are some common channels. Named channels are grouped in bands of the spectrum i.e. Tactical channel 1+, Subtactical channel 1+, Navy Channel 1+, etc..
 

Name	Type	For comms with
Directory	data	Broadcasts system specific channels
'System' Traffic control	voice	System wide traffic control facility
'Planet' Traffic control	voice	Local space traffic control(~1M km)
'Planet' Orbital control		Orbital traffic control (~10 dia.)
Tactical	voice	between craft after establishing communications.
Subtactical	data	between craft after establishing communications.
Supertactical	image	between craft after establishing communications.
Hailing	voice	craft on first meeting
Space Emergency	voice	vessels in distress
Passages	data	Passenger booking
Markets	data	commodoties prices
News	image	current events
Entertainment	image	recreational programming
Navy	varies	between Naval vessels
Scout	varies	between Scout vessels
Company	varies	between company vessels

    By law only IN and IISS vessels may tune in Navy and Scout frequencies. Similarly the government sells bandwidth to private companies for their private use. In practice there is a large group of hobbyists that listen to communications between official vessels. For this reason most IN, IISS and private communications are encrypted. There are 1000 channels available for general use in the tactical through supertactical bands. There are thousands of Navy, Scout, Market, Entertainment, etc... channels in each band.
    By law Imperial ships must guard the Hailing and Space Emergency channels at all times aflight.

Data transfer rates
Radio communicators are limited to  bytes/sec/channel
Maser communicators are limited to  bytes/sec/channel
Laser communicators are limited to 1.8 Gbytes/sec/channel
Meson communicators are limited to  bytes/sec/channel

The typical Xboat data load is ~ 85 Tbytes and takes an hour or more to transmit via laser.

    A ship arriving in a new system would tune to the directory channel and download a list of channels in use in the system. Several examples are below.

Grote:
Directory
Grote System Control
Godzilla Local Space Control
Newport Traffic Control
Grote Passages
Grote Markets
News Channel 6
Entertainment channels 2, 4, 33, 76 and 109

Glisten:
Directory
Glisten System control
Glisten City orbital control, Passages, Markets
Porfiru orbital control, Passages, Markets
Kaityl orbital control, Passages, Markets
Yalij orbital control, Passages, Markets
Almathy orbital control, Passages, Markets
Grund orbital control, Passages, Markets
Gea orbital control, Passages, Markets
Korn orbital control, Passages, Markets
Quin orbital control, Passages, Markets
Doreen orbital control, Passages, Markets
Jaxon orbital control, Passages, Markets
Juni orbital control, Passages, Markets
Hunmi orbital control, Passages, Markets
Deidresii orbital control, Passages, Markets
Talbora orbital control, Passages, Markets
Paladia orbital control, Passages, Markets
Birnstein orbital control, Passages, Markets
Ablethon  orbital control, Passages, Markets
Kurnit orbital control, Passages, Markets
etc..etc...
News Channels 3-21,178-213, 225, 456-550
Entertainment Channels 112-300, 335-456, 702-887