Optimum customers will no longer have free access to newsday.com

Optimum broadband customers will no longer have free access to newsday.com after Sept. 15, according to an email sent by Newsday publisher Debby Krenek to employees Wednesday.

Newsday will launch an exclusive free trial offer to those customers for its digital content, under an agreement between Altice USA and Newsday Media Group, which will last “through the end of the year,” according to Ms. Krenek’s email. Optimum broadband customers can pay $3.49 a week after Dec. 31.

The change comes about two years after Altice USA acquired Cablevision and Newsday. The Netherlands-based company provides Optimum cable television and internet broadband services to residential and business customers in Nassau and Suffolk counties, and free access to newsday.com has been available to Optimum broadband customers for about a decade, until now.

Newsday print subscribers will continue to have free access to all newsday.com content, the paper reported.

Altice will begin notifying customers of the change Wednesday via email, Newsday reported.

As part of the agreement between companies, Patrick Dolan, who owned a partial stake in Newsday, has acquired the remaining shares, becoming the sole owner of the Long Island daily newspaper.

“As a result of a new agreement between Pat Dolan and Altice USA, Pat has effectively acquired the remaining ownership stake in Newsday, which demonstrates his strong confidence in our business and in our future,” Ms. Krenek wrote in the email.

Mr. Dolan owned 75 percent of Newsday since July 2016 when he acquired his stake for an undisclosed amount from Altice USA. He is a senior network adviser at News 12 Networks, part of the Altice USA news unit.

This purchase came less than a month after Altice USA’s parent, Altice N.V. of Amsterdam, bought Cablevision Systems Corp. of Bethpage for $17.7 billion. Newsday had been owned by Cablevision since 2008, which was founded by Patrick Dolan’s father, Charles F. Dolan.