The packet loss in the trace you provided is outside SL's network.
Very amusing that SL's own home page, suddenlink.com, is apparently outsourced and hosted on an external network instead of being hosted inside their own network. Even more amusing is to see CenturyLink in the route, which I see as well even though my current route goes through Level3 instead of NTT.
Luckily SL's email servers still do appear to be hosted inside their network, so path to suddenlink.com homepage should not be an issue unless you are browsing their site.
Maybe you should try dslreports.com for PP target as a more reliable destination than suddenlink.com.