How far back you can subpoena phone records depends almost entirely on how long the carrier still has them. No statute caps the reach of the subpoena itself. What limits you is each provider’s internal retention schedule and the type of record you want, and those windows range from a few days for message content to more than a decade for some call detail logs. Timing, not legal procedure, is usually the deciding factor.
Retention Windows by Record Type
No federal law sets a fixed number of years carriers must keep phone records. The Stored Communications Act requires providers to preserve records for at least 180 days on request, but beyond that floor each carrier writes its own rules. Those rules differ sharply depending on what kind of data is at issue.
Call detail records — the logs showing date, time, duration, and numbers involved — have the longest reach. AT&T has reportedly kept call detail records going back to 2008 and does not delete them on a rolling basis. Verizon keeps them for roughly seven years. T-Mobile retains them for about two years. Schedules can change without public notice, so it is worth confirming the current policy with the carrier’s legal compliance department before drafting a subpoena.
Text message metadata — the numbers, dates, and times, but not the words — sits on a shorter clock. Carriers generally hold that routing information for one to two years. The actual content of text messages has the shortest life of all. Some carriers store it for only a few days before permanent deletion, which makes content recovery through a subpoena nearly impossible unless the request goes out almost immediately.
Cell-site location information (CSLI), the log of which tower a device connected to during a call, is typically kept for one to two years depending on the carrier. Once any of these windows closes, the data is gone, and no subpoena can pull it back.
What a Subpoena Can Actually Reach
Even inside the retention window, a subpoena does not reach everything on the account. The federal Stored Communications Act draws a hard line between metadata and content. A subpoena to a carrier can generally obtain non-content records, including:p>
- Subscriber information: account holder name, billing address, device type, payment method, and length of service
- Call detail records: numbers called or received, timestamps, and call duration
- Text message metadata: numbers involved and the date and time each message was sent or received
- Cell-site records: the tower locations the phone connected to during calls, subject to the warrant rule discussed below
Under 18 U.S.C. § 2703, a governmental entity can compel disclosure of these non-content records through an administrative subpoena, grand jury subpoena, or court order.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2703 – Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records Civil litigants using a third-party subpoena under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure face a more complicated path, because the SCA’s compelled-disclosure provisions are written for governmental entities. In practice, many carriers produce non-content records in response to properly served civil subpoenas, but some object or require a court order first.
Message Content Is Off-Limits to Most Requesters
The words inside messages, voicemails, and other stored communications get much stronger protection. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2702, a provider of electronic communication service is prohibited from knowingly divulging the contents of any stored communication to any person or entity, with narrow exceptions.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2702 – Voluntary Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records Law enforcement can obtain stored content, but only with a search warrant supported by probable cause.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2703 – Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records A private party in a civil case cannot subpoena a carrier for message content. The realistic options are to request the messages from the opposing party through discovery, or to obtain consent from the account holder.
Cell-Site Location Data Requires a Warrant
Historical cell-site location information sits in its own legal category. In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Supreme Court held that obtaining historical CSLI is a search under the Fourth Amendment and that the government generally must have a warrant supported by probable cause to access it.3Supreme Court of the United States. Carpenter v. United States The Court recognized narrow exceptions such as exigent circumstances. For civil litigants, the practical effect is that carriers are especially reluctant to produce CSLI in response to a civil subpoena, and any serious attempt should anticipate the need for a court order specifically authorizing release.
VoIP and Encrypted Messaging Apps
Communication increasingly runs through internet-based platforms rather than traditional carriers, and those services follow different retention rules. What a subpoena can reach depends on what the service actually stores.
Google Voice, when used through a Google Workspace account, retains call logs, text messages, and voicemails according to rules set by the organization’s administrator, which can range from a fixed period to indefinite storage.4Google Vault Help. How Retention Works A subpoena to Google for Workspace Voice data may pull more than a traditional carrier subpoena, depending on those settings.
End-to-end encrypted services like Signal produce almost nothing. Because Signal’s design prevents it from accessing message content, group memberships, contact lists, or profile information, the only data Signal can supply in response to a subpoena is the date an account was created and the date it last connected to the service.5Signal. Grand Jury Subpoena for Signal User Data, Central District of California If the person you need records from mainly used an encrypted app, a subpoena to the platform will be largely unproductive, and the better route is the individual’s own device through discovery.
Preserve Records Before They Are Purged
The reach of a subpoena is only as long as the data still exists on the day the carrier processes it. Because retention runs on a rolling basis, waiting is the biggest risk in the entire process.
A litigation hold, sometimes called a preservation letter, is a written notice to the carrier’s legal compliance department directing it to suspend routine destruction of records tied to a specific account. Carriers are not always obligated to honor a hold request from a private litigant, but sending one creates a record of diligence, and some carriers will comply voluntarily.
If a party with a duty to preserve destroys or allows destruction of relevant evidence, courts can impose sanctions for spoliation. The most common is an adverse inference instruction, telling the jury to assume the lost evidence would have been unfavorable to the party that failed to preserve it.6United States Courts (Federal Judicial Center). Motions for Sanctions Based Upon Spoliation of Evidence in Civil Cases Those sanctions apply to parties with a duty to preserve, not typically to a third-party carrier following its normal retention policy. The lesson is practical: if you expect to need phone records, send the preservation letter and start the subpoena process now, not during trial prep.
How to Issue the Subpoena
In federal court, subpoenas for document production are governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45.7Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena The standard form is AO 88B, “Subpoena to Produce Documents, Information, or Objects or to Permit Inspection of Premises in a Civil Action,” available on the federal courts website.8United States Courts. Subpoena to Produce Documents, Information, or Objects or to Permit Inspection of Premises in a Civil Action State courts have their own equivalent forms and rules.
Before drafting, gather:
- The account holder’s name
- The specific ten-digit phone number tied to the account
- The narrowest date range that covers the relevant period, since broad requests invite objections
- The carrier’s legal compliance address, which differs from any retail address
Service is typically handled through certified mail or a professional process server, and some carriers accept submissions through legal compliance portals. Carriers charge administrative fees that vary by provider.
Under Rule 45, the carrier or any affected party can serve a written objection before the earlier of the compliance deadline or 14 days after service.7Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena Narrowing the date range and specifying which record types you need reduces the risk of a successful objection. When no objection is filed, carriers typically produce the requested records within 30 to 45 days, usually in a digital format matching the categories requested.