First, this isn't the real number and second 'handle' doesn't describe the situation, which is an artificial limitation built in as an artifact. Whether you are in the camp that believes this will be worked around in bitcoin or not is irrelevant, on a technical level any cryptocurrency can be created that can handle MANY more transactions.
Right now you could sync to the blockchain on the bandwidth T-Mobile gives for free while on international roam in 100 countries.
So the amount of data handled by every node is not even close to any sort of practical limit. Anyone with Netflix could sync to 50x the number of transactions.