When Deutsche Telekom went looking for buyers for its telecom towers business, it naturally started with a list of telecom companies. But in the end, it was Canadian alternative-investment heavyweight Brookfield Asset Management and U.S. private-equity house DigitalBridge that came in with a last-minute bid in July to buy 51 percent of the towers business.

Vodafone looks set to follow along similar steps. In November, it was reportedly in advanced talks with a consortium led by alternatives specialist KKR with Global Infrastructure Partners to sell a large chunk of its separately listed Vantage Towers subsidiary.

Are such take-private deals simply a facet of declining equity markets, or a sign of something more significant? It’s likely part of the maturation process for an infrastructure asset class that is coming into the mainstream.

“First, we need to step back and recognize that these take privates are still a minority of infrastructure investments,” sa