Call Detail Record | Engineering Wiki

A record class containing operational metadata about a telecommunications event, potentially including parties, time, duration, direction, service, device, subscription, or cell information.

A Call Detail Record (CDR) is not the content of a communication. It is operational metadata generated by a telecommunications system for a call, message, or data-session event.

Fields vary by operator and service. A record can include party numbers, start time, duration, direction, service type, device/subscription identifiers, or serving-cell information.

Forensic interpretation must not assign more certainty to a field than its source supports. A CDR row by itself does not:

prove who physically used a device,
turn a serving-cell record into an exact GPS position,
reveal the content or intent of a communication.

The schema and generation semantics should be established first; records can then be correlated with time, device, subscription, and other evidence.

Detailed context: HTS Analysis.