Aspects of the disclosure provide methods and apparatuses that use counter based phase signaling to transmit digital data. The counter based phase signaling uses a reduced number of transitions to transmit a large number of bits. A method of counter based phase signaling includes transmitting a reference transition to start multiple-bit data block transmissions from a transmitter module to a receiver module, starting a first counter to count in accordance with a first clock of the transmitter module, and transmitting a first data transition corresponding to transmitting a first multiple-bit data block from the transmitter module to the receiver module when a counted number by the first counter corresponds to the first multiple-bit data block. The first clock has a same frequency as a second clock in the receiver module.