Swedish Embassy in Lebanon smart text campaign

Link: SMS Evacuation: How Swede It Is .
The Wired news blog carries this story about the Swedish Government’s efficient evacuation in the Lebanon recently:

“In the last week we have sent out five text messages to everyone in Lebanon who is registered with a Swedish mobile network,” said Swedish foreign ministry spokeswoman Nina Ersman.

Smart use of information. I’m sure I read a story recently about the Embassy of another country that was only able to text the citizens who had registered their presence in the country with the Embassy. That sounds rather haphazard to me. I really like the idea of being able to get a comprehensive list based on live records held by the mobile companies.

I wonder if the Swedish Embassy actually got hold of a list of Swedish-registered handsets from its own national mobile companies or from the local Lebanon supplier(s)?