Dense coding in entangled states

Quantum dense coding is addressed. For this case, quantum dense coding is extended to the multiqubit entanglement with N pairwise qubits entangled and with maximally entangled N qubits shared between Alice and Bob. It is shown that using the pairwise entangled qubits can be more efficient when two parties communicate whereas using the maximally entangled qubits can be more efficient when the N parties communicate.