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This survey consolidates blockchain fundamentals relevant to telecom (consensus, cryptography, smart contracts, and governance) and synthesises how these primitives enable secure logs, automated roaming\/settlement, decentralised identity, resource trading, and 5G\/6G slicing and edge computing. The authors introduce an end\u2010to\u2010end taxonomy that maps blockchain mechanisms to network functions and cross\u2010cutting constraints and provide comparative evidence from representative studies on performance (latency\/throughput), operational cost, and deployment maturity. A structured literature search and screening process over major digital libraries yields a curated corpus spanning 2015\u20132025, with emphasis on recent advances in permissioned and hybrid designs suited to low\u2010latency networking. 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